ROCKY MOUNTAIN DEVELOPMENTS

Promising Development on Missoula Mill Site and Idaho’s Version of the Boston Tea Party

By Headwaters News, 7-17-06

The influx of newcomers have created a need for development across the Rocky Mountain West, and that demand for development has increased the cost and value of property, and along with it property taxes have gone up too.

Two stories today report on changes wrought by development, including one from Montana on a new opportunity for a former mill site, and one Idaho county's attempt to give property owners a break from constantly rising taxes.

Former mill and other industrial sites in the West, contaminated after years of industrial activities, are sometimes classified as brownfields. That classification can provide federal funding via the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the land and put it to new use.

Brownfields funding has cleared the way for housing developments on what used to be gold smelters near Silvertonand Colorado Springs.

Now Missoula officials are hoping to reclaim an old mill site in the heart of their downtown for a housing development. The deal is a complex one, bringing together federal, local and private funds. Robert Struckman reports in the Missoulian that if the goals are all met, Missoula will come out the winner, according to the project's sponsors. The development calls for 500 new housing units: condos, apartments and single-family homes. There will also be another 100,000-square-feet of office and retail space. The municipal baseball stadium, located right next door, will pick up more parking spaces. And the city will get a $3.6 million riverside park.

In Idaho's Bonner County, a flurry of tax appeals led the county commissioners there to dust off an old state law that allows them to find a tax assessment "defective" and to nullify that assessment.

The Idaho Statesman reports that the commissioners' action would roll back assessments to 2005 values, and the cost to do that would be about $15,000, for mailing out new notices and other administrative duties.

The county commissioners, sitting as the Board of Equalization, said the 2,742 tax appeals filed made it impossible to hear all the appeals by the state-mandated deadline.

Last year, about 95 percent of the 100 property-tax appeals were upheld. This year, the majority of the appeals heard thus far have been successfully overturned.

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