Columbia Falls voters pass resort tax

Columbia Falls city voters approved a new 3% resort tax in the primary election, 768-670.

The bulk of the tax will primarily go to supporting emergency services such as the fire department and police, but it will also come with a property tax rebate for people who own property inside the city limits.

The tax will not go into effect until October 2021.

The Hungry Horse News received calls from two voters prior to the vote. One man said he lived outside the city limits, but the measure appeared on his Republican ballot.

Another woman said she lived inside the city limits but said her ballot did not have the measure at all.

In both cases voters apparently lived in precincts where the precincts are split between county and city voters, which caused the discrepancy.

It amounted to a handful of votes, the election department noted.

The votes will ultimately be canvassed, Monica Eisenzimer, longtime county election office manager noted. The far greater complaint came from county residents who wanted to vote on the resort tax, but couldn’t, she said.

In other local results of note, Brad Abell won the Republican county commissioner primary, 7,157, to 7,069 for Tony Brockman and 6,612 for Elliott Abrams.

In the Republican Senate District 2 primary, Carl Glimm received 2,642 votes to Paul Longfield’s 1,379 votes. Norm Nunally received 781 votes.

The complete county results are available at: https://flathead.mt.gov/election/documents/2020_Primary_Election_Results.pdf

Note: This story has been updated to reflect 100 percent of precincts reporting. The end results, however, have not changed.