Managing these properties requires continuous operations, maintenance, and strategic planning. Our Facilities Department handles this work with a core team consisting of a director, a custodian and maintenance supervisor, a maintenance technician, and an administrative assistant.

Across our individual campuses:

Keeping facilities safe, functional, and welcoming involves three primary types of work:

Balancing facility needs is like managing a household budget—there are almost always more projects than dollars. We are grateful for our facilities team and the community support that keeps our shared assets running strong. In the next section, Finance Director Carrie Fisher shares insight into how funding works and how we make thoughtful, responsible decisions to prioritize our district's needs. 

State law (20-9-502, MCA) splits every district's Building Reserve Fund into four separate subfunds. Money can't wander between them, and each one is tracked with its own code in our accounting system. Belgrade has two legal districts, Elementary and High School, so we run two Building Reserve Funds, each with its own buckets.

The permissive piece is a partnership with the state. The board can levy up to 10 mills per district without a vote (20 mills applies only to a single K 12 district, which Belgrade isn't). In return, the state contributes School Major Maintenance Aid, often called SMMA.

The amount a district can budget, sometimes called the "box size," is set by formula: a flat amount per district plus a per student amount based on the prior year's budgeted enrollment (ANB). The guidance has historically described this as $40,000 per district plus $115 per ANB, and the 2025 Legislature (HB 15) updated those rates. The state will pay up to 80% of the box, and if state appropriations come up short, every district's share is prorated.

A few rules worth knowing:

Expenditures must be coded to specific projects, because OPI reports that data to the Legislature to justify the state aid.

In 2021, the board placed two Building Reserve levy questions on the ballot, one for each district, and voters approved both. Each one increased an existing voted levy and set it for ten years.

Both ballots list the same allowable purposes, and this is the part that matters most. Voted dollars can be used for:

That list is a promise to voters. If a project doesn't fit one of those purposes, voted levy dollars can't pay for it, even if the project is a good idea and even if the fund has a healthy balance.

One more detail: because the levy is a fixed dollar amount, the mills needed to fund the levy will go down as our community's taxable value grows. The ballot mill figures were estimates based on 2021 taxable values.

The levy runs for ten years. The voted levies expire in 2031. After that, the voted levy ends unless voters approve a new one. Any balance left in the voted subfund would still be restricted to the purposes on the ballot.

The permissive subfund follows the state's list in 20-9-525, MCA. That list includes safety and security improvements, plus projects that create operational efficiencies, such as:

The voted subfund follows the ballot list in the previous section.

So what's off limits? The Building Reserve is for the buildings and grounds themselves, not for running school day to day. It can't pay for:

Not quite. The Building Reserve can’t pay for teacher salaries, but there is one exception. State law allows the permissive levy and School Major Maintenance Aid to pay for school safety and security, and Montana law (20-9-236, MCA) defines that to include staffing for school resource officers, counselors and other staff who help keep students safe. So these dollars can help pay for safety related positions like school counselors.

Belgrade does not currently use the permissive levy this way. Today, those dollars go to maintaining and repairing our facilities.

Some Montana districts have also asked voters for a dedicated safety levy, which goes into the safety subfund. Here are the larger districts where voters have approved one.

Safety levies have been more difficult to get voter approval for elsewhere. Voters turned down safety levy requests in Billings and Helena in 2024 and in Kalispell in 2023, and Missoula's high school safety levy failed in both 2024 and 2025. Closer to home, Monforton and Amsterdam safety levies also failed in 2024.

Safety costs like counselors, school resource officers, cameras and secure entries have to be paid from somewhere. Without a safety levy, they come out of the General Fund, where they compete with salaries/benefits, curriculum, supplies and everything else it takes to run a school.

When a district moves those safety costs into a safety levy, the General Fund dollars that used to cover them are freed up. That money can then go toward other needs, such as staff salaries/benefits, curriculum, supplies and materials. 

A safety levy is still a tax increase, and it's a decision voters make. But it's one more tool districts can use to protect classroom dollars.

So what have taxpayer dollars actually paid for? Here’s a look at how the Building Reserve has been put to work in our schools. With the voted levy bringing in about $500,000 a year for the Elementary District and $250,000 a year for the High School District, every project is weighed carefully. Larger ones, like a roof or a track, can cost more than a full year of that revenue and often take several years of saving before work can begin.

Costs are rounded. Put them next to the levy amounts and the challenge is clear. The track resurfacing alone cost nearly two full years of the High School District's voted levy, the High School South Wing reroof cost about two and a half years, and the Middle School East Wing roof took nearly two full years of the Elementary District's voted levy.

Our focus is on extending the life of our buildings and keeping students, staff and our community safe. That's why we replaced the old wooden bleachers with metal ones throughout the district, including the visitor bleachers at the High School field and track. The facility assessments do the same kind of work: they help us plan the next projects instead of reacting to emergencies.

We're lucky to have community partners who help us go beyond the basics, so taxpayer dollars stretch further.

The Belgrade Girls Softball Association (BGSA) has been a tremendous partner in caring for our softball fields. They've helped with upkeep, helped put the fields back together, shared the cost of upgrading backstops and netting, and pitched in on repairs after extremely heavy spring snowfall.. twice.

The Belgrade Booster Club has helped offset costs on the track resurfacing and the Special Events Center floor resurfacing, paying to elevate the paint and finish so both spaces are better for fans and athletes. They've also purchased weight room equipment for the Middle School. The Booster Club is always there when we need them.

Some projects happen entirely through community support. Our videoboard received no district funding at all; it was 100% fundraised.

Our parent groups pitch in too. The Ridge View Parent Teacher Council (PTC) purchased a new outdoor sign for the school, which is about to be installed. Projects like this add a lot to a school's look and feel, and they're made possible by families who give their time and raise funds for their schools.

We also earn rental income when other groups and organizations use our facilities. That income helps pay for some building maintenance, upkeep and equipment replacement.

We also apply for grants and other outside funding whenever we can. A $115,000 grant from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) paid for solar panels at Ridge View Elementary. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has reimbursed us $28,601 for new drinking fountains and water bottle fill stations at Ridge View and the Middle School. The Transformational Learning grant contributed $16,764 toward the High School music practice rooms. Together, that's more than $160,000 in improvements that didn't come from local taxpayers.

These partnerships don't replace the Building Reserve, but they help us spend taxpayer funds consciously and effectively..

The district's five year capital outlay plan lists about $10.7 million in facility projects of $15,000 or more. It was presented to our Facilities Committee in June 2025, and the dates in it are subject to change as needs and costs shift.

For perspective, the voted levies bring in about $750,000 a year combined, or roughly $3.75 million over five years. Even with the permissive levy and state aid added in, the list of needs is larger than the dollars available, so projects have to be prioritized.

Many of these come straight from the facility assessments completed in FY24. The Middle School east wing stands out: much of it still has original doors, windows, flooring and mechanical systems that are near the end of their useful life.

Ridge View Elementary is another building that needs attention. It's now our oldest elementary school, and it's starting to show its age. This past summer, we replaced the tile floors throughout its hallways, and new carpet in the classrooms is next on the list.

Facility projects don't happen on a whim. The district has a Facilities Committee that reviews needs and helps set priorities. Any project over $80,000 is bid publicly, and the Board of Trustees must approve the contract before work begins.

Behind all of this is our Facilities Director, LeRoy Lundell, who manages every building and all the grounds across the district. That means handling the day to day work of keeping schools running while also planning years ahead, anticipating what will wear out next and lining up the projects to address it.

The Building Reserve is how we take care of the buildings this community has already paid for. Voters set the rules for the voted levy, the state sets the rules for the permissive levy and SMMA, and we're accountable to both. Every dollar is coded to a subfund and a project, reviewed by auditors, and reported to OPI.

The voted levies expire in 2031. To keep up with roofs, mechanical systems, fields and safety needs, the district will need to ask voters to renew them, and possibly to increase them as construction costs continue to rise. Our facility assessments will help guide that conversation, and we want the community to be part of it.

Finance Director/District Clerk

cfisher@bsd44.org

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