Updated June 12 to correct the number of county records held by The History Musuem

Cascade County officials have been discussing budgets and funding of non-mandated services in recent months.

Those discussions are generally conducted during informal meetings among County Commissioners and county staff and any applicable external agencies.

The meetings are noticed on the county calendar and open to the public, but are not recorded.

Commissioners also hold public hearings on the budget over the summer before any formal votes.

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On May 27, commissioners and the county finance officer met with the directors of Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art and The History Museum to discuss the funding the county has historically provided.

The Electric attended the meeting and was the only other member of the public or media in the room.

Commissioner Joe Briggs said there hasn’t been a museum-specific levy for some time since the Montana Legislature repealed those statutes.

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Historically, he said, the only reason the county provided funding to The Square and The History Museum was that they had been involved in passing a mill levy in what he thought was the 1970s.

According to a 1993 letter, the county levied two mills for museums and provided $66,000 of that to the Paris Gibson Square building fund and the remainder of the funds were split evenly between The Square and The History Museum.

For the fiscal year that ended in July 1994, the two mills generated $202,246. After $66,000 was allocated to The Square, the remaining $138,246 was split, with $68,123 going to each museum.

That formula has remained in place ever since.

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For the current budget year, the county allocated $66,000 to The Square and then $120,835 to each museum, according to the budget worksheet provided during the May 27 meeting.

That totals $307,670, which is the same amount the county has allocated to museums every budget year since 2023, except fiscal year 2024, when it was $305,625, according to the budget worksheet.

At one point, the C.M. Russell Museum threatened a lawsuit over that funding and the county did provide $15,000 to that museum toward the log cabin studio restoration in 1993-94, Briggs said.

There is no longer any statutory obligation for the county to provide funding to museums, but Briggs said the county is authorized to do so at the commission’s discretion and if there’s a signed interlocal agreement regarding museum funding, he wanted to see it.

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Trista Besich, county finance officer, said she and the clerk and recorder’s office hadn’t located any formal contracts but found a 1993 budget appropriation.

Tracy Cosgrove, executive director at The Square, said she had some documents from 1993 of an agreement between The Square, county and Great Falls Public Schools that expires at the end of 2027 but some pages were missing.

GFPS owns The Square building and leases it to the museum.

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Connie Constan, director of The History Museum, said she’d go through their historical records.

Commissioner Eric Hinebauch asked whether interlocal agreements are supposed to be filed with the county clerk and recorder’s office, to which Briggs said they are supposed to be, but depending on who filed documents, they may not have keywords that make sense and he’s had to go through physical records to find documents.

Carey Ann Haight, deputy county attorney, said the county’s record-keeping practices have improved over the decades.

She said when she started in the county attorney’s office in the 1990s, she walked papers to the clerk and recorder’s office to ensure they were recorded.

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Briggs said at least the documents they’d found so far regarding museum funding seemed to be from around the same time period but it was interesting if there was an interlocal agreement with such a long term.

Cosgrove said she thought the initial agreement was extended.

Besich said the county is not obligated to fund museums under state law but county officials are trying to determine if there’s a contractual obligation.

Since the voter-approved mill levy ceased, the two museums have been receiving general fund support, she said.

Besich said she’d been asked why the county is paying for maintenance on a building it doesn’t own to the tune of about $2 million over 30 years.

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As budgets are getting tighter, Besich said that the museum funding has come up multiple times as a non-mandated service.

Hinebauch said that because of the history, the county should stick with what they’re doing for now.

Briggs said he wanted to see the interlocal agreement.

He said times are different, but he can’t imagine the commission committing to funding for 34 years, and typically, interlocal agreements have an exit clause.

Briggs said he was taught that the commission can’t obligate future commissioners to something as the interlocal agreement Cosgrove said she had a copy of appeared to do.

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He said it was concerning from a legal standpoint since the statutes governing the funding were repealed.

Briggs said if there is a signed interlocal agreement that’s expiring soon, he can see the county holding the course and then reevaluating the funding structure.

He said the county allocated a portion of funding to The Square specifically for building maintenance, but the museum has been using it for programming, an issue that was discovered when the boiler failed.

Cosgrove said she’d been in her position since July 1, 2025, and had not been told the county contribution was supposed to go specifically toward building maintenance, but that the museum staff was establishing a building fund.

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She said The Square used its allocation to finance the new boiler and a fire suppression system and to pay for facilities staffing.

Beiggs said that no matter what the commission decides, the museums need time to adapt so they wouldn’t make any changes for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

She said the 1993 letter, which was included in the meeting documents, from commissioners to the museums and GFPS stated The History Museum/Cascade County Historical Society would be the county’s exclusive historical museum and repository of the county’s historical documents and artifacts.

Constan said the museum has 1,800 county record books and another 300 boxes of records.

On June 12, Constan told The Electric they’d completed their inventory and have more than 2,000 county record books.

“We are providing a service to the county,” she told commissioners, to house those records with an archivist in a professional location that the public can access to view those records. “It thrills me that we have this partnership.”

Constan started as director of The History Museum on June 30, 2025, and said that she understands the county budget is tight, but the museum provides public access to records, which would be difficult for the county clerk and recorder’s office to deal with.

Briggs said they do recognize that and that during his tenure, the county had allocated about $5,000 in additional annual funding for an archivist because The History Museum was providing that service

He said the county also awarded ARPA funds to the museum and grants for an elevator.

Cosgrove said The Square’s total budget was $850,000, so the county funding made up about 23 percent.

Commissioner Jim Larson said they’d talked about The Square being a GFPS building and that over at least the last two years, the county had been cutting staff so it had been asked internally why the county was paying for a building it doesn’t own.

Cosgrove said they appreciate the partnership with GFPS and the county to deliver their mission to the community and that the county funding is foundational in helping pay for programming and keeping admission free.

She said the funding allows the county to have “wonderful cultural assets that help make this community shine.”

Cosgrove said The Square was hoping to expand its free offerings to rural and tribal communities to learn the art of their time and how people reflect the value of their lives through art.

Hinebauch said county officials needed to research documentation and then make decisions regarding museum funding. If commissioners decide to continue funding museums, they’d need new interlocal agreements, he said. Briggs and Larson agreed.

Briggs said none of the commissioners who signed a 1993 letter are alive. They were all thoughtful gentlemen, he said, “but situation has changed rather a lot since 1993.”