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Tag: requirement

  • Kalispell City Council scrapped the residence requirement for incoming city manager

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    Sep. 10—Kalispell City Council will no longer require city managers to live within city limits.

    The decision to do away with the residency requirement came as Council searches for a successor for Doug Russell, who left the city manager position in late August. GMP Consultants was hired last month to spearhead the four- to six-month recruitment process and Development Services Director Jarod Nygren has taken over as interim city manager in the meantime.

    Councilors on Monday night weighed the importance of expertise over experiencing and managing the city as a resident. The body ultimately landed on letting potential applicants know that city residency is preferred but unrequired.

    In 2006, the city enacted an ordinance requiring all city employees to live in Flathead County with a hiring preference given to applicants living in the city. But the ordinance was scrapped in 2022.

    There is still a residency requirement in the City Manager’s code that will have to be updated, City Attorney Johnna Preble told Council.

    Mayor Mark Johnson supported striking the code, saying that the requirement may drive away talented applicants.

    He brought up the possibility of being a qualified applicant in the pool, “but he has three horses, two cows, whatever. Where’s the horse property in Kalispell?”

    “What I am more concerned about is the individual and getting the right team member in place versus that they hit all the boxes,” Johnson said.

    Councilors Sandy Carlson, Sam Nunnally, Kari Gabriel and Chad Graham sided with the mayor’s reasoning.

    Gabriel added that it didn’t make sense to require some city employees to live in the city while others didn’t have to.

    Before agreeing to make residency preferred, Councilor Ryan Hunter said that living within the city would lead to better decision-making and introduced the idea of a 12- to 18-month grace period for the incoming city manager to find housing, owing to high housing costs.

    Daoud remained in the minority wanting to keep the residency requirement.

    “This is the one position in the city that I am not willing to let live outside the city because the management that he does is directly affecting the citizens and should affect him or her as well,” Daoud said.

    Councilors were in agreement over the incoming city manager’s salary proposed by the Human Resources department.

    The starting salary range was proposed between $195,000 to $207,000, according to a memo from Director of Human Services Denise Michel. The range came from a review of wages in six comparable cities in the state.

    Russell’s pay in Kalispell for fiscal year 2025 was $204,490 plus health insurance and retirement.

    COUNCIL IS moving forward with transferring ownership of the Central School building to the Northwest Montana History Museum.

    The municipality has leased the 130-year-old historic building at 124 Second Ave. E. to the nonprofit since 1997, but the question of ownership has made it difficult to raise money from private donors and apply to funding programs, according to museum leadership.

    Aside from an initial city investment, the museum has been responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the space, including an $81,000 roof replacement in 2010 and a $61,000 heating and cooling upgrade over the summer, according to the museum.

    The permit parking lot on the north side of the property would remain under city ownership, according to Nygren. The city is also looking to keep the green space open to the public.

    Hunter and Daoud were in favor of adding a restriction keeping the museum from altering its historic architecture.

    COUNCIL ALSO agreed to hiring a third party to deal with ambulance billing for the Kalispell Fire Department as call volumes increase.

    The task is performed by one full-time employee, and the city has seen a 10% to 15% increase in calls every year, “so we’re pretty susceptible to something happening,” Nygren said.

    Kalispell is the only class one city — a city with more than 10,000 people — that still manages billing in-house, according to a memo from Fire Chief Jay Hagen.

    “What we’re looking at doing is just trying to maximize our ambulance transporter response revenue,” Nygren said. “Currently we get about 40% of the billing. This would likely increase us to over 50%.”

    Ambulance billing represented about $1.3 million in revenue, according to the fiscal 2025 budget.

    Reporter Jack Underhill can be reached at 758-4407 and junderhill@dailyinterlake.com.

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  • Ruling revives lawsuit to allow state funding for special education to go to religious schools

    Ruling revives lawsuit to allow state funding for special education to go to religious schools

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    A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel revived a lawsuit this week filed by Orthodox Jewish families that sued California education officials over the state’s policy of refusing to fund special education programs at religious schools.

    Two religious schools and three Orthodox Jewish parents whose children have autism filed the lawsuit against the California Department of Education and the Los Angeles Unified School District last year. The parents sought to send their children to Orthodox Jewish schools and argued that the state’s policy of barring funding for religious institutions was discriminatory.

    Other states allow certain religious private schools to receive special education funding. For decades in California, those dollars have only been permitted to go to schools that are nonsectarian.

    Judge Kim Wardlaw, writing for the panel, ruled that California’s requirement burdens the families’ free exercise of religion. The panel’s decision sends the case back for reconsideration to a federal court that had previously rejected it.

    Attorney Eric Rassbach, who represents the families in the lawsuit, called the court’s decision a “massive win for Jewish families in California.”

    “It was always wrong to cut Jewish kids off from getting disability benefits solely because they want to follow their faith. The court did the right thing by ruling against California’s bald-faced discrimination,” he said in a statement.

    The California Department of Education argued in legal filings that by not certifying religious schools to educate children with disabilities, which would be required for them to receive federal funds, it was upholding the “principle that the government must be neutral toward and among religions.”

    The California Department of Education declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

    Funding for special education can be directed to a private school if a local school board determines, on an individual basis, that it would be the best way for a particular student with disabilities to receive an education, the department wrote in court papers.

    Attorneys for the California Department of Education wrote in court papers that the nonsectarian requirement was necessary because without it, local district officials would wield significant power to direct students to their favored religious institutions.

    “This is the opposite of the government neutrality toward religion that the Constitution requires…” the department’s attorneys wrote.

    However, Wardlaw wrote in her ruling that the state failed to show that its nonsectarian requirement is “narrowly tailored to serve” the interest of religious neutrality.

    Wardlaw added that it puts parents in the position of being forced to choose between an education for their disabled children and religion.

    “Parent Plaintiffs are required to choose between the special education benefits made available through public school enrollment (and subsequent referral to a private nonsectarian nonpublic school placements) and education in an Orthodox Jewish setting,” she wrote.

    A U.S. district judge last year dismissed the case and denied a request for a preliminary injunction to block the state from enforcing the rule.

    Wardlaw affirmed the lower court’s decision to dismiss claims from Shalhevet High School and Samuel A. Fryer Yavneh Hebrew Academy because neither school could satisfy the requirements necessary to be certified to educate students with special needs, according to the decision.

    Teach Coalition, a group that helps secure government funding for Jewish day schools, lauded the ruling as a major victory for religious liberty.

    “This is a game changing moment for our community and for religious families of children with disabilities — not only requiring change in the state of California but holding nationwide implications,” Teach Coalition chief executive and founder Maury Litwack said in a statement.

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    Hannah Fry

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