HELENA — Helena voters are being asked to re-approve the school district's building reserve levy this May, the district says the funds are necessary to complete high-priority deferred maintenance and building needs.
Helena Public Schools has to maintain 21 school campuses where they host thousands of events for both the school and the public.
"So give you an idea, we're talking about 104, or 550 classrooms, about 200 offices, about 200 bathrooms. We've got 18 kitchens, nine lunch rooms and 19 gyms. There's a lot of space out there, and our kids are in it every day, and so is our community, our community uses our facility a lot after school," said Todd Verrill, Helena Public Schools Director of Services.
The average age of a Helena Public School building is 57 years old, with the oldest which was built in 1938. Because of this, some of the schools' facilities need to be replaced or repaired.
"High priority items of 36 million. You can see the other 40 million for medium priority and then low priority is 11 million" said Verrill.
High-priority items are items that are crucial to take care of first before other replacements or repairs are considered.
"A roof that's leaking. That's a high priority. If you have a boiler that's going out, that's a high priority. And then if they're safety issues, that's obviously a high priority, too," said Verrill.
With rising costs for repairs, a proposal has been put forward to increase the 10-year building reserve levies for the elementary and high schools in the May second school election.
"So my recommendation is to increase our elementary to $3 million a year in a high school to $1.5 million a year," said Verrill.
So what would the impact be on your property taxes?
For a home valued at $200,000, The elementary building reserve levy would raise your property bill by more than 38 dollars a year, and The high school levy would raise taxes on a home valued at $200,000 by 15 dollars.
It's money that district leaders say is badly needed to maintain the learning environment.
"We have inflation, we have deferred maintenance, we still have safety and security things to address," said Verrill, "and then of course, we have major systems that are failed, failing."
