Fairness for school funding

We want our kids to have the best education money can buy. We love our children, they are our future. We honor our teachers. However, it's apparent to Flathead homeowners that we need a new funding formula for schools.

The formula of the past decade has gradually and steadily increased homeowner responsibility for schools. We must get back to the days when the state picked up its fair share. The architects of the old formula gave tax breaks to every other class of property thereby shifting further this burden to homeowners.

Flathead County homeowners pay the highest school taxes in Montana. We also pick up the tab for 15 percent of the total state's school equalization mills. The pinch we homeowners feel in the Flathead is nearly double that of Lewis and Clark County, where Helena is located.

Flathead County taxpayers subsidize schools throughout Montana. When we look at residential taxes, four of Montana's 56 counties pay more than half of the total school 100 equalization mill taxes. Yet those four counties comprise only about a third of Montana's homes.

This inequity is the result of rapid localized growth in places like the Flathead, combined with a broken residential appraisal system. The current system attacks growth and taxes old-timers off their land.

During the past decade, legislatures have shifted the tax burden from one class to another, from income taxpayers to property taxpayers. No wonder homeowners are feeling the pinch.

Flathead County pays the highest school taxes in Montana, but comprises only 8 percent of Montana's homes. However, one in six new homes built in Montana are built in the Flathead. That growth is paying for schools throughout Montana.

Why is that growth happening in these four counties of Flathead, Yellowstone, Missoula and Gallatin? Because people want to be a part of Montana's great outdoors. It's critical to preserve Montana's great outdoors as an asset to attract high quality growth. Locally, we have got to do it right. Our great outdoors is not only the engine of our local economy, but also the fuel for Montana's schools.

I think Whitefish has shown a lot of creativity that could be a lesson for state government and communities across Montana. In Whitefish, per capita, we have added more value to the market than anywhere else in Montana, to the extreme where our area constitutes only 1 percent of all homes, but homeowners pay nearly 4 percent of all school equalization taxes statewide.

Locally, past visionaries posed some unique solutions to our funding problems. Thanks to our resort tax, Whitefish taxes tourists and provides rebates back to local property owners. By comparison, down the road in Kalispell, streams of tourists pass through town, consuming services but contributing nothing to local government coffers.

Whitefish is the only municipality in Montana that fostered a unique relationship with local schools, whereby the residential increment of urban renewal projects is returned back to local schools. Whitefish also nurtures the relationship between state lands and local schools for long-term return. The trails and conservation project now being launched will add millions of needed dollars into our system and tune the engine of our economy.

Our communities have the heart and leadership needed to assure that they provide livable spaces for our families. We cannot tax families out of our community in our struggle to fund schools. Montana schools, teachers and students are among the greatest in the country. Our kids can compete anywhere.

We do need to work so more money makes it into the pockets of our teachers, that they have health insurance available for their families. We want our bright minds to stay around and not move to Nevada.

Our challenge is to recognize that to maintain our quality schools, teacher retention is paramount. But we must couple this challenge with the recognition that our local homeowners are taxed-out. We need to balance the demands on homeowners with other sources.

The state also has an obligation to our kids. For fairness, we must return to the days when more of the state dollars for education came from balanced sources. Greater fairness for homeowners would make our great schools even better.

We are fortunate to live in such a great state. But need more grace to allow politicians to become leaders that seek unity. We need fair solutions to school funding that focus on the issues that unite us as Montanans.

Mike Jopek is a farmer and represents the Whitefish area in the state legislature as a Democrat. He can be reached at mjopek@mt.gov or 250-1184.