The Great Falls Public Schools board approved estimated permissive levies for the upcoming budget year.

State law requires that school boards adopt a resolution whenever they intend to impose an increase in non-voted levies in the next fiscal year.

Those levy increases are based on budgets and used for specific programs and services.

The resolution has to include a description, the amounts of the increase and impact on certain home values, and printed in a newspaper and the district website by March 31.

GFPS claims $916,188 in state tax credits

The amounts in the resolution are estimates and will be finalized during the budget process since some of the necessary data isn’t available until the summer from state agencies.

To address facility conditions, the law allows districts to permissively levy a school facilities maintenance amount in the sum of $15,000 per district plus $110 per budgeted Average Number Belonging (ANB) for the prior fiscal year. In determining the amount to be levied, the District must identify and list school facility maintenance projects anticipated as part of the resolution.

The district’s permissive levies, allowable under state law, are:

• school facilities maintenance to address facility conditions for $15,000 per district plus $110 per budgeted average number belonging, or enrollment, for the prior fiscal year. To determine the amount, the district must identify and list anticipated school facility maintenance projects. Those include mechanical, electrical, plumbing and roof upgrades and window replacement per the facilities condition inventory at elementaries, as well as the same at C.M. Russell and Great Falls high schools
• tuition fund is expected to have a significant increase in the elementary district and slight decrease in the high school district, due to continued increase in number and severity of students with special needs the district is serving.
• bus depreciation levy is expected to have a slight increase to replace existing GFPS-owned buses.
• adult education fund will increase to support transformational learning
• flexibility fund has an estimated increase to support the Advanced Opportunity Act program

The largest increase is in the elementary tuition fund for $769,467, or about 4.10 mills, according to GFPS, due to increased services for high needs students and more students needing specialized services.

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The estimated impact for all combined funds is an estimated 5.85 mills, Brian Patrick, GFPS’ business operations manager told the board during their Jan. 27 meeting.

The impact on taxes for a home with an estimated taxable valuation of $100,000 is an increase of $7.91 per year and a home valued at $200,000 is an increase of $15.84 per year, according to GFPS.

The exact fiscal numbers won’t be known until August when the district receives its taxable values from the Montana Department of Revenue.

For the fiscal year beginning July 1, the permissive levies in the chart are estimated based on certified taxable values from the current fiscal year.