Big Sky Pushes Limits of Do-It-Yourself Government

By Guest Writer, 8-27-09

There is no Montana town like Big Sky. Actually, to be a tad more literal, there is no Montana town called Big Sky. Officially, Big Sky the town doesn’t exist.

Conspiracy theory? No. Big Sky does exist, but as those who have lived and worked there the longest will be quick to tell you, as a community, not a town.

And in Big Sky, there is a big difference between those two words. It’s the difference between its past as a recreational oasis for second home owners from all around the country, and its present as home to a more traditional cast of locals who live and work there year-round: teachers, firefighters, business owners.

The issue of incorporation – whether Big Sky the community should become Big Sky the town, complete with a mayor, town council, boundaries and taxes – has sprung up and died down every once in a while since Big Sky Resort was carved from a remote mountain valley almost 40 years ago. But the debate has become more heated in recent years: as the makeup of Big Sky’s community changes, many are wondering whether it’s time for Big Sky’s rules to change along with it.

To be fair, for not being an actual town, Big Sky does a pretty good job of imitating one. A string of special districts, taken together, do most of what one a municipality would normally do. A water and sewer district, fire district, planning and zoning district, school district, and its own division of the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office all operate independently within the Big Sky area. But perhaps most important one of all is the resort tax district.

	Big Sky Town Center aspires to be a focal point for a community that doesn't have a traditional downtown. Photo by Brooke Peterson.

The resort tax district is where the money comes from. As one of very few communities in Montana that’s permitted to charge sales tax, Big Sky levies a 3 percent tax on all luxury goods and services sold within its boundaries. Hotels, campsites, restaurants, bars and recreation destinations all apply under Montana’s definition of luxury.

The resort tax district was set up in 1992 after some heavy lobbying in Helena by the Big Sky Owners Association, the largest and oldest homeowners’ association in the area. The BSOA, originally established by the resort itself, was the closest thing to a government that Big Sky had before the resort tax district was set up.

Bill Murdock was the BSOA director at the time and says the system they had just wasn’t working.

For decades, the BSOA board of directors made all the major decisions for people who owned property within the resort’s borders. But what started out as one homeowner’s association governing one resort multiplied into over 50 of them governing their own resorts, condos and exclusive income-based communities, an unwieldy hodgepodge straddling the border of two counties.

The task of raising money and making decisions that applied to everybody in the Big Sky community was nearly impossible. Big Sky Resort itself was sometimes resented for its sweeping influence over almost everything that happened in the area.

Then, There's the Liquor Issue The fact that Big Sky isn’t incorporated has its perks – the biggest one being that it doesn’t have to follow Montana’s city liquor license quotas. Liquor licenses are subject to fierce bidding wars among restaurant owners in many Montana towns, because state law holds that there can only be a certain number of liquor licenses within an incorporated area, depending on the population. The most generous population estimate for Big Sky is around 4,000 people. Under Montana law, that would mean that Big Sky as a town would be eligible for 6 beer and wine licenses and 6 all beverage licenses. Of course, Big Sky is not a town - and it currently boasts 39 businesses that serve liquor. Big Sky is still subject to county quotas, but that still makes for a lot of bars and breweries. In fact, in Big Sky, even places with names like Blue Moon Bakery, Wrap Shack, Huckleberry Café and Lotus Pad serve liquor. Not surprisingly, the liquor license issue has loomed large in the incorporation debate. One of the leading arguments against incorporation is that Big Sky would suddenly have to follow the city quota rules. According to Bill Simkins, an opponent of incorporation in Big Sky, that would mean Big Sky could go a long time without opening a new restaurant that serves liquor, and that could inhibit growth. “In a resort town, that’s what you need … restaurants and beverages go together,” Simkins said. “We literally could not see another license in another 30, 40 or 50 years.” In fact, that scenario is not very likely. For one thing, existing licenses would likely be grandfathered in, and there are plenty of them. For another, because quotas are based on the U.S. census, it would be 2020 before any quotas would kick in, says Steve Johnson, a proponent of incorporation. Johnson also says a lot of existing licenses are not fully utilized and could really be sold for a better use. If Big Sky were a town, it would also have the option of seeking state designation as an incorporated resort area, which would have a different set of quota rules . The state can issue one license for every 100 accommodation units (like hotel rooms) and another one for each additional 50. This is how incorporated towns like Whitefish are able to bypass traditional quota rules. “To me, it’s a red herring issue,” Johnson said. Still, nothing is routine when it comes to alcohol. Mark Goode, who owns an Asian food joint called Wok Kee Mountain Kitchens, says that to get his license he had to prove, using the exact number of miles, feet and inches, that his establishment was more than five miles outside of the nearest town, which was Bozeman. For Goode, who says he is mainly against incorporation, his license might be the only thing he would like about it. “My liquor license would be worth more than this place,” he said. - Kimball Bennion

Murdock remembers what it was like trying to run the BSOA as just one of many homeowners’ associations. “There were a lot of people not in our legal boundaries that really resented us,” Murdock said. “I loved what I did at one level and at another level, it was just a bunch of rich people suing each other… It became apparent that it was fatally flawed to have a homeowners’ association running the community.”

The resort tax district solved a lot of problems. Public works were more efficient, county and homeowners’ association borders became less restrictive, and Big Sky had a quasi-town within the resort tax area’s borders.

The resort tax board is elected by Big Sky residents, and allocates the resort tax money at an annual appropriations meeting. Despite getting their funds from the resort tax board, the other districts operate independently of the resort district and of each other. Each has its own board of directors; some of whom are also elected, and some who are appointed by the county. Of course, in Big Sky, there is no “the county” either, since the border of the resort area district crosses over the county line between Gallatin and Madison counties. Most districts have jurisdiction in both counties, but there are a few exceptions. The planning and zoning district, for example, is only a Gallatin County entity and has no power in the Madison county side of Big Sky.

Confusing and problematic as it sounds, Big Sky has actually done a pretty good job working with the district system for the past 17 years – and in fact many residents believe it’s actually fostered a sense of community. Big Sky has still had community needs like any other place. But whether it’s a major need such as a new high school or a simple project such as a community softball field, they won’t find much help from the existing powers that be. That means that almost any kind of civic project becomes a concerted community effort in Big Sky. All it takes is community spirit and money, and Big Sky is full of people who have both.

According to U.S. Census data from 2006, the median income in Big Sky was $62,750 – the highest in Montana. Big Sky also has a pretty young population, with a median age of 34. The estimated population of people who live in Big Sky year-round is around 4,000. Seasonal population can get as high as 15,000 on peak days, so the second home owners are still a major chunk of Big Sky’s identity. But according to a study by Retail Research Group that the Big Sky Town Center published in May 2009, the permanent population is projected to grow at an annual rate of 10 percent, meaning Big Sky could gain another thousand in the next few years.


Video by Brooke Peterson and Eric Oravsky.

Hatton Littman moved to Big Sky two years ago and will begin teaching at the new high school in September. It isn’t easy to live in Big Sky on a teacher’s salary, but it was her choice to live there, she says. After all, she could have chosen to commute from Bozeman like many who work in Big Sky do.

“You’re here by choice pretty much,” Littman says, “The families who live here made a conscious choice to live here.”

Big Sky’s reputation as a top notch recreational area that’s still able to offer the quaint charm of a small town makes it easy to see why so many have made that choice. But, Littman says, there is a tradeoff.

“If you live here, you have to be involved and make things happen,” she says.

That has been the Big Sky mantra for a while: if you don’t like something, get involved and do something about it on your own – there’s no government to fix it for you.

Yet government has its benefits, and some people think it’s time for Big Sky to get one.

“There’s a lot of community involvement, but no mayor’s office to go bang on when you need something,” said Mary Jane McGarity, the current director of the BSOA.

McGarity says simple things such as building parks and getting municipal shield insurance to help ease the burden of running a recreational area is hard to do when they aren’t recognized as a political body by the state of Montana.

“We’ve got to figure out a creative way to solve (those problems), and incorporation is one of the answers,” McGarity says. Incorporation has been on Big Sky’s mind for some time now. In 2004, the Big Sky Chamber of Commerce sent out a survey to 2,600 Big Sky residents about their opinions on which community issues were most important. Of the 287 returned, they found that issues such as lack of community focus and lack of rule enforcement were prominent.

“Both of these negative factors could be addressed through a community wide strategic plan and possibly the creation of a local governing body,” the survey’s report concluded.

So the Chamber of Commerce formed the Community and Infrastructure Solution Group as a way to gauge the community’s feelings toward the possibility of incorporation.

Steve Johnson, who has represented the group in many public forums since its inception, says that the issue has raised a lot of questions from the Big Sky community, and at the moment, the good feelings toward incorporation just aren’t out there.

“There’s no passionate flame going right now, that’s for sure,” Johnson says.

And if it’s going to happen, the flame needs to be there. Incorporation is a process that is completely up to the residents of the community itself. A petition for incorporation with at least 300 signatures from registered voters has to be sent to the county to be validated by the county clerk. (Only the Gallatin County part of Big Sky would in included in an incorporated entity).

	Meadow Village, and the golf course, were part of the original resort development. Photo by Brooke Peterson.

Then a border with a population density of at least 200 people per square mile would be drawn up, and it would be put on the ballot for a vote.

“The issue is up to those people if they want to do it or not,” Johnson said. “We’re sort of waiting for the drum-roll of people saying, ‘Yeah, we want to do this.’”

One of those people, Eric Ladd, says that he doesn’t pretend that incorporation will solve all of Big Sky’s problems, but it will provide a fair arena for them to be solved.

“We need to have decisions made by people who live and work in Big Sky,” Ladd says. “Most of the important decisions made for Big Sky are made by people who don’t live here.”

Ladd pointed to an issue as small as outdoor lighting on the local softball field. In order to put the lights up, the field needs zoning permission from the county, and such a small issue makes very little headway with county commissioners.

“This is a simple issue…but when you try to discuss this at a county level, you get put in the round file,” Ladd said.

Without incorporation, “it’s not so much what we can’t do, it’s what we can’t do efficiently,” Ladd says.

Johnson admits that Big Sky has learned to function without incorporation, but the issue isn’t so much about functionality as it is proper representation.

“It’s a functional place...” Johnson said, “but it’s still not run by the local people. That to me is the big deal.”

But for people such as Bill Simkins, a developer whose family has owned land in Big Sky for decades, the big deal is being able to continue doing his job the way he’s used to.

The Simkins family owns the Big Sky Town Center, a commercial and residential development that acts as a rustic-looking main street area off Highway 191. The Center has spent the past 10 years getting approval for development rights from Gallatin County.

Simkins says that developers are used to dealing with the county and following the county’s rules, and a new government could change the direction that Big Sky is headed.

“We’ve spent a lot of years getting approvals in Gallatin County,” Simkins says. “If we were to be incorporated, it would inject a lot of uncertainty in there.”

A few businesses and residential neighborhoods have taken up residence there now, but there’s still a good 15 years worth of work to be done, according to Town Center employee Ryan Hamilton.

“We’d be switching governments in the middle of a big project,” he says.

For now, though, the incorporation issue hasn’t bothered Simkins or Hamilton for a while because uncertainty about the economy has given people bigger things to worry about, Hamilton says.

“People are tax adverse right now,” says Hamilton, who believes that a new set of taxes would have to be imposed on the people within the proposed municipal boundaries in addition to the county taxes they already pay.

“I call it a reverse Robin Hood scenario,” Hamilton says. “That area is where most people live who work year-round and don’t live in the resort areas…you’re basically taxing the working people.”

And those who live outside those small boundaries, Hamilton says, would not be included in the town.

But those exclusive boundaries are kind of the point, says Johnson. “The purpose is not to manage a resort…” Johnson says. “It is clearly a concentration of registered voters, and a concentration of where people live is – duh – a town.”

And as far as taxes go, says Ladd, that would depend on how much the people of Big Sky want.

“Taxes are a result of community needs,” says Ladd. “The great news about this debate is that the decisions would be made by the people who would pay the taxes.”

At this point, it’s hard to say whether the incorporation issue is a question of “if” or “when,” especially during times of economic uncertainty. In fact, both sides of the argument have used the economy as the perfect reason why Big Sky should or shouldn’t be incorporated, and they both make a good point.

Bad times call for a more organized form of local leadership. But a town costs money, and who’d be willing to foot the bill? Then there’s the question of how liquor licensing will be affected, which has become a big enough issue in its own right. But this argument is older than the recession is, and its complexities go back to Big Sky’s roots as a playground first and a home second.

The Big Sky of today, with its High School, residential neighborhoods and local business center, didn’t exist in its beginning. It was just a ski bum’s paradise in the middle of nowhere. But change was inevitable when people wanted to make paradise home and when a few moving there weren’t there to vacation at all, but to live and work permanently.

That became the classic Big Sky story: the vacationer who came for a visit and never left. More and more people seem to be doing that, but a growing number are also reversing the order by moving to Big Sky for their job, and taking advantage of the natural playground when they can.

With these changing demographics, Big Sky the playground is slowly becoming Big Sky the hometown. With that change, the question of what the new rules will be – and who will be the ones making them – needs to be answered.

This story is part of the Big Sky, Past and Future series. Click on the headlines below for previous stories and check back for new installments at NewWest.Net/BigSky

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Big Sky, Past and Future, an Overview [End of article]