Somers Lakeside School Board Approves Budget Amendments, Teeing Up Special Assessment for District Taxpayers in February
The amendments were approved to right-size a district data entry error that gave taxpayers a 25% tax break, instead of an intended 5% break. It will be a one-time special assessment.
By Mariah Thomas
The Somers Lakeside school board approved a trio of budget amendments at its Dec. 15 meeting to correct a data entry error that resulted in a district funding shortfall. It means taxpayers in the district will receive a special tax assessment in February 2026.
The board approved collecting $401,568.85 for the general fund, $90,675.73 for transportation and $138,215.57 for retirement, adding up to the total shortfall of $630,460.15. The Flathead County treasurer will administer the special assessment.
“This is one time,” said Chance Barrett, the chair of Somers Lakeside’s school board. “And that’s where I say, like a lot of schools, we have an opportunity to better document our processes, so we make sure this isn’t an ongoing lesson. This is a one-time lesson. So, we learn from it right now, and our commitment is not to have this happen again.”
Per a district press release, taxpayers whose property is valued at $300,000 will pay a one-time assessment of $36.59. Taxpayers whose property is valued at $600,000 will pay $77.09.
Those funds were supposed to be collected already but weren’t. Barrett and Alex Ator, the district’s superintendent, said Somers Lakeside tried to stretch the timeframe for collecting the funds. They settled on sending out the assessment after the holidays, in the hopes it’d feel like less of a hit to taxpayers.
Even with the adjustment, the district has emphasized taxpayers received about a 5% break on their tax bills this year, which is what the district intended before the error. Instead, the district’s data entry error resulted in a 25% property tax break. The collection aims to bring back the 20% the district meant to collect but did not.
Barrett explained the three funds taxpayer dollars will go to — the general fund, transportation and retirement — serve different purposes. The funding for transportation helps pay for students to attend school. Most general fund dollars, along with the retirement dollars, go toward paying and providing a retirement package for the district’s teachers.
“The majority of this is helping fund the individuals that make this place what it is, and that is our teachers, and that’s the last place we want to pull back because … almost half of our teachers have master’s degrees or better,” Barrett said. “The amount they invest in themselves and compared to what they get paid to other industries that have master’s degrees — it’s laughable. And so, for us to be stewards and make sure that they’re receiving the benefits that they’re entitled to, I think, is really important.”
The district has promised it will schedule a community question-and-answer session closer to the assessment date to address any lingering questions. It has not published a date for that session.