FAQ

§ What is new about the election process?
Ballots will be mailed to ACTIVE Great Falls voters to authorize the Great Falls Public School District to levy taxes for the schools’ operating budget for 2012-13. Registered voters who did not vote in the last election are not considered active and must re-register at the county elections office in order to vote in this election.

§ What’s Needed?
Over the past few years, the state has provided a much lower percentage to education than in the past. The past two years, state funding has dropped below true costs. The impact leaves schools in need of a school levy from local taxpayers to be able to offer the same quality instruction to students in the coming year as was offered last year.

§ Doesn’t the state pay for education?
In Montana, taxes for schools are collected at the local level and a portion goes to the state. It is then re-distributed on a per-pupil basis to districts to provide educational equity regardless of the resources of a particular community. Districts are also allowed to levy additional taxes up to a cap set by the state. In Great Falls we have room to use this discretionary levy. Overall, the district receives about 55% of the operational budget from the state and about 45% must come from local taxpayers.

§ What about stimulus? How can the school need more money?
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (commonly called stimulus) distributed money throughout the education system of America. The local school district did receive funds through though stimulus – but the funds are received as one-time-only funds (meaning they won’t come back next year). This fiscal year the stimulus money will run out (as required by federal law) and so won’t be available for next year.  Get more facts on how school dollars are split up on the district’s school finance website.

§ What happens if the schools get more funding from other sources?
The District has a long history of being good stewards of the taxpayers’ money. We have a proven history of giving back voted mills if legislated funding exceeds our estimates. The District will operate the same way this year.

§ How much will the levy really cost me?
Every property owner can figure out what the levy would cost.

Just go to the following county website WEBTAX

You need the first and last name of the property owner. You can also use Property Tax ID, property address, geo code, subdivision information, and legal description.
To determine what the levy amount is, multiply the “Net Taxable” dollar amount by .0084.

For example, the Net Taxable Value of a condo is $2012. The next door neighbor’s condo just sold for $125,000. If the condo owner multi plies $2012 X .0084, the mill levy will cost the owner $16.90.

§ Doesn’t the District have Reserves and a PPL tax distribution that will fix the problem?
For 7 years PPL protested its taxes. To maintain the instructional program, the District spent approximately half that money, but reserved some in case the suit was lost and the District had to repay PPL. The suit was resolved and the reserves were freed for district use. The district used the released tax reserves to equalize holes over the past few tough economic years. This PPL money helped the district maintain the quality education the community has come to expect. The PPL money was exhausted last year.

§ Couldn’t we avoid the need for a levy by cutting administrative pay?
We face an education budget deficit of $3 Million. The district now spends 8.3% of it’s education budget on administration. We are cutting administrative expenses by 2% — the District is making across the board cuts on all departments of 2%. Those cuts will reduce our deficit by $1.3 Million.

Increased administrative cuts will not balance our budget. If we cut administrative expenses by another percent we would only save 0.083% of the total education budget–not nearly enough. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.

To maintain quality education, it is necessary that we rally around the schools and give this educational levy our support!