The McCall-Donnelly School District has been trying to build employee housing for the last two years but with minimal progress, the district is now turning to voters for help.
The school district wants to build a 35-unit employee housing project near Stibnite St. and N. Mission St. in McCall. Over several months last year, the city and the crew working on the project tussled over project conditions, which led to delays.
Part of the project was eventually approved last May, and this district moved forward with phase one, which included building eight units. Now, the McCall-Donnelly School District will go for a bond to cover the cost of the rest of the homes.
The bond
This May, voters will decide on a 15-year $14 million bond, which McCall-Donnelly Superintendent Eric Pingrey said would cover the remainder of the housing project. He said the total cost will be between $17 and $18 million — unless there are more delays.
Pingrey said when looking at the average property in McCall, this would cost about $6.30 per month in property taxes.
The first eight units are being built with help from money the school district scraped together from selling two pieces of land and dipping into existing funds.
“We kind of drained our construction budget and dipped into our reserves a little bit because this is such a crisis,” he said. “We’re a very veteran staff up here, so we’re having several retirements a year. And it’s really hard for college kids to come up here and put their entire paycheck to rent.”
The entire McCall area has long faced housing affordability and supply problems. This has hurt many employers, including the school district, who are struggling to retain and recruit people.
Pingrey added that there are about eight district employees in teaching positions who haven’t been through the traditional programs for their subject areas. If more homes can be built, the district would be able to recruit and hire more staff.
“We have an elementary teacher on alternative certification teaching high school physics. We’ve hired a handful of paraprofessionals (noncertified teachers) who are working through their program. It’s tough when there are no applicants,” he said. “…We’ve got a lot of good people stepping up, but we don’t have the quantity of high-flying applicants we would like.”
How did the school district get here?
Eagle-based The Land Group Inc.’s housing project consists of 35 units, 32 of which are split across four multifamily buildings. The remaining three are single-family “cottage-type units.”
The project was first introduced in September 2022 when the school district submitted a rezone application for the land it wanted to build on, which was approved.
In April 2023, the plans for the first phase of the project hit the McCall Planning and Zoning commission. The commission added a condition requiring the school district to bury 400 feet of existing power lines on Mission Street. Both sides could not agree and a decision was delayed while a solution was worked out.
At a meeting in May, the first phase of the project was approved after all involved parties agreed that burying the lines was “not preferred” at the time and they would be under-grounded during future work on Mission Street.
Pingrey said the plan was to complete the first eight units by this spring to use as a recruitment tool. However, because of delays in getting the certificate of occupancy and the inclement weather causing a short window to build, this did not happen.
Pingrey said the foundation and dirt work on the land is done.
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He vocalized that the team would move forward with the first eight housing units “no matter what.” The bond will determine if the rest of the project will get built.
Voters will see this issue on their May 21 ballot.
