Libby council will consider developer's $ requests at tonight's meeting

The Tuesday, Feb. 13, special council meeting in Libby was meant to review its Community Development Fund and the best methods of dispersing the $1.5 million that still exists.

But it turned into a whole lot more following comments by several people, including developer Zach McNew.

McNew, his wife Tracy, along with Libby Lofts partners Scott Curry and Brick Briar’s Bruce Weatherby and Joan Oakland, are seeking $138,000 from the city’s Community Development Fund to begin work on the old high school in the heart of town. Tracy McNew said the total cost is $184,000 and the remainder would be funded by the partners.

Their plan is to turn it into 26 apartments, three of which would be kept as affordable for teachers, a community meeting room free to use for the public is part of the plan.

To accomplish the $5 million project, the developers are seeking public support as well as cash and grants from various sources.

But during Tuesday’s nearly hour-long meeting, the discussion involved how much Libby Lofts and The Friends of Historic Hotel Libby should receive as well as revising a policy set in 2017.

Gail Burger, who is renovating the Hotel Libby on California Avenue, is seeking $9,000 to pay for cost overruns that occurred while contractors were putting a new roof on the building.

Both projects are on the agenda for the 7 p.m. meeting tonight. Council would typically meet on Monday, but the President’s Day holiday precluded that.

Toward the end of the Feb. 13 meeting, Zach McNew seemed to indicate that if city didn’t provide the money Libby Lofts was seeking, it could torpedo the chance at affordable housing for teachers and possibly more.

McNew said the plan to offer subsidized housing for teachers at a rate of $750 per month was money the developers were willing to give up.

“That’s $27,000 per year the developers give up and we felt that was part of giving back to the community,” he said. “While $25,000 is great, that would probably limit what we could do in our budget as far as the teaching housing and the park, bringing that all together.”

Tina Oliphant spoke well of public-private partnerships as ways of getting projects done to benefit local economies.

Two years ago, she was approved as the city’s grant administrator for upcoming wastewater/water construction projects. She’s also served as the executive director of the Lincoln County Port Authority and Kootenai River Development Council.

She provided a document that could serve as an application for anyone seeking a grant. 

“I want to see all the sources of money, the cost, who is going to screen the applicants,” she said. “Do you want a committee to first look at a project request as opposed to the entire council making a decision?

“And I think it’s really, really important that project owners identify their strategy.”

She also thought that more information needed to be shared by the developers before council approves any grant requests.

“I didn’t see a preliminary architectural report, a budget…tricky things for all projects, but you gotta have it,” Oliphant said.

Council president Brian Zimmerman thought Oliphant’s ideas were a good place to build on.

“If you want to get things done, the public-private partnership is how it happens,” he said. “I think we can do some things that are in front us now and then set ourselves up for how we want to do this with grant applications. We can redo our grant policy a little bit, too.”

Zimmerman recommended that the city grant $25,000 to the Libby Lofts project and possibly $3,000 or $4,000 to the Historic Hotel.

“That keeps us at the $1.5 million and working off the interest to do the next projects,” Zimmerman said.

Council member Gary Beach said he wanted to know if the money was going to be spent as a whole or, “Are we gonna try and make it an everlasting fund we work off the interest? That’s the first question.

“After that, we can figure out the application guidelines.”

Councilor Melissa Berke said she polled the community and out of 287 responses, “use only the interest accrued for each fiscal year” was a popular comment.

Councilor Kristin Smith said she thought an outside group would be a better choice for dispersing the money to, “take it out of the political realm.”

She agreed a better application process with more information was necessary. 

Hugh Taylor said he appreciated all the information that council received.

“Our policy does need work and I’m not a big fan of outside organizations using this money and doing what they see fit with it because that was done with the first $8 million and it’s gone,” Taylor said. “Some went to grants, some went to loans, some of it was repaid, some of it wasn’t. There wasn’t a whole lot of structure there and no accountability.”

Dean Chisholm, the attorney who represents and advises the city, also  shared his thoughts on the policy and suggested possible changes to it.

Tracy McNew thought the current policy needed more clarification.

“We would have rather requested a loan, but the policy says you can’t do loans. We are willing to pay it back, but what does it look like, how does that work? Is there a contract that needs to be signed?”

Former councilor DC Orr emphasized transparency when doling out money.

“You guys need to be doing this slowly, cautiously and very open. We’re 20 years into this and we’ve done a very poor job protecting that money for the people that it should have benefited. 

“We’ve done a real great job of benefitting people who have access to positions of high influence but that really wasn’t what the fund was for,” he said.

Jennifer Nelson also spoke of the need for exercising caution with spending the money and that an entity other than city council should be responsible for deciding how it’s spent.

“The policy that was established in 2017 was a result of what happened before then,” she said. “We saw it be frittered away and I don’t think it’s the responsibility of the city to provide financing or grants or loans to private businesses. You don’t have enough control over what actually happens with that money and you will end up with, I believe, nothing.

“I support that it does help finance things the city needs, infrastructure and for economic development, to aid that, but not to be specifically handed to individuals for their idea of what economic development might be,” she said.

Zach McNew had a different view of how the money was spent.

“You say the money was squandered and wasted away, but you have a nice golf course, we got the CARD Clinic, a paving company that did a lot of paving around town,” he said. “It wasn’t squandered away, it created some jobs. You gotta spend money to make money, to create jobs.”

He then spoke about how, after looking at the policy, he and Tracy thought money from the economic development fund fit in their project.

“We bought this property last summer and we’ve been working day and night on how to make this work,” he said. “I think we have a really, really good plan and we presented it to leaders around the state and they say we can do it.”

McNew also expressed frustration for what he calls attacks on Facebook on he and Tracy.

“That’s full of lies and I’m getting sick and tired of it. I do good things for this community and this (Libby Lofts) will be one more good thing I’ve done for this community.”

Councilor Ian Smith recommended that, “we stop the whole process right now and put it (money) in the bank and come back to the policy. It seems to be that there’s a lot of issues and a lot of questions.”