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Taxpayers: attend school board meetings

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Editor,

I encourage voters in School District No. 30 Ronan to attend the monthly school board meetings. These meetings are held the second Monday of each month in the high school library. I know many residents feel that since they no longer have kids attending school in the District, there is no reason for them to attend meetings. The reason that voters should attend is that many of you pay property taxes in the District and I am of the opinion that many of you would be surprised, and maybe even shocked, to learn the details of where your tax dollars are going.

I requested that a discussion of the District’s Transportation and Bus Depreciation Funds be held at the Board meeting on Nov. 11. I made this request because these two funds are supported by permissive, or non-voted levies, assessed to property tax payers in the District. I presented several facts related to the Bus Depreciation Fund that I felt were relevant to the discussion. Three of the facts which I felt stood out were: The District’s Bus Depreciation Fund had a whopping 349 percent increase over the past five years ($218,495); in one year, 2012, the District purchased ten new school buses at a total cost of $831,000; and it is going to cost District taxpayers about $7.10 per mile to operate the District buses during the current fiscal year.

I believe that if the dollars used to support the Transportation and Bus Depreciation Funds for fiscal year 2012-2013 were voted levies, District taxpayers would never support them.

I was accused of providing incorrect information regarding the number of new buses purchased in 2012 by the District. My information came from the Lake County Superintendent of Schools office that downloaded the information from the Montana Office of Public Instruction. If the information is incorrect, it is because the District supplied wrong information to that office. I stand by all the information I supplied and welcome questions and review.

Gale Decker
Ronan

 

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