Swan River School Set to Take $1.5 Million Building Reserve Levy Ask to Voters
The rural K-8 district outside Bigfork wants to collect $1.5 million over 10 years to rebuild its building reserve fund, starting with furnaces that heat half the school
By Mariah Thomas
At Swan River School, the custodian’s office is decorated with “buckets of love” — garlands students put together for the school’s lone staffer dedicated to maintenance. Inside the office are four furnaces, first installed in 1998, that run the heat to eight classrooms on the elementary side of the building.
According to Josh Lee, the principal at the rural K-8 school outside of Bigfork, every day the furnaces keep working is a good one. But keeping fingers crossed, he said, isn’t a long-term plan, and the school wants to update that equipment as soon as possible. That’s why the district is asking its taxpayers to approve a $1.5 million building reserve levy, its first funding ask since the early 2000s. It plans to collect $150,000 per year over the next 10 years.
If approved, that levy is estimated to come with a price tag of $22.96 annually for a home valued at $300,000 and $49.05 annually for a home valued at $600,000.
The district’s ask for a building reserve levy comes after it spent a sum of $662,000 to replace nine heat pumps in the building last year. While Lee described that project as a necessary one, it also depleted the district’s funding for major maintenance projects that might crop up, taking $161,613 from available building reserve funds. The rest was paid through a loan, which the district is using an existing permissive building reserve levy to pay back. But Lee said the district’s “emergency fund,” as one might think of it in their home budgeting, needs replenishing.
Luke Adamson, the school board chair who also served on the district’s levy committee, agreed.
“Essentially, that project maxed us out,” Adamson said. “And there was a couple parts of that project, well, we got that bid back that we weren’t able to afford, so we kind of just do it in phases.”
Adamson said as the board and levy committee considered options for a funding ask, they started with a much higher figure which they then whittled down to arrive at $1.5 million.
“We are well aware that, you know, nobody wants their taxes to go up,” Adamson said. “And so we whittled it down as bare bones as we could get it, and then we ended up spreading it out over the 10-year ask so that the tax burden for those in our district will be the least amount possible so that we can still hopefully get the monies we need. But also, we are very mindful of not trying to raise taxes more than what they need to be.”
The first priority should the levy pass is the furnaces, but Adamson also described security and plumbing needs the district would be able to address in the future should it receive the funds.
Swan River School’s levy ask goes in front of voters as school district levy passage rates have been on the decline across the state. In Flathead County this spring, five districts had levy asks on the ballot for a range of needs. None passed muster with voters.
But Lee emphasized Swan River School’s general fund budget is healthy. The district doesn’t need extra funds to pay its teachers or keep the school’s lights on. The failure of the levy won’t mean cuts. Instead, Lee explained, it’s a matter of future planning and maintaining the building, which he called a community resource.
“Our building is used all year-round, in the evenings,” Lee said. “We hosted everything from basketball camps to soccer camps to a funeral this summer. Our building is used constantly and is part of the community, and that’s what we’re asking for, is for it to continue to be able to be a part of this community and a place that we can maintain, and unfortunately just to provide the academic side of things, we don’t have the extra to throw at the building needs right now.”
This fall’s school election will be conducted entirely by mail. Ballots will be sent out Sept. 9 and are due back by 8 p.m. on Sept. 29. Voters can either mail their ballots back or drop them off at drop box locations.
Those drop boxes are located at the Flathead County Elections Office between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; or at the Swan River School, located at 1205 Swan Highway in Bigfork, between 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Both drop boxes will remain open until 8 p.m. on Election Day.