BOZEMAN — When it comes to making decisions for the Bozeman School District, it falls into the hands of eight trustees.
“All in favor?” That was the question asked by Sandy Wilson, Board Chair on Monday night.
During Monday night’s board meeting, trustees called for May 4, 2021, to be the election day for the district for the following school year.
“Motion was made by Trustee Reinhardt seconded by Trustee Fisher,” declared Wilson.
The ballot for the May election hasn't been finalized yet. But four trustee positions will be on the ballot because their three-year term will be up. At first, it was announced three of the trustees are running again.
“We’ve got three elementary trustee positions, currently 2 candidates have put their names in the hat: Trustee Lusin and Trustee Fischer have both opted to rerun," said Mike Waterman, Director of Business Services. "At the high school, there’s the one position. Trustee Wilson has her name in.”
But then it was corrected to include all four trustees are rerunning for their positions. Another big topic of discussion was the budget.
“The discussion item tonight is our preliminary budget overview," said Waterman. "It’s the first real look at our budget situation for next year.”
And it’s something you want to pay attention to especially if you are a property owner in Bozeman.
“Under current law, in our general fund we get about sixty percent of our money from the state and forty percent of it comes from our local property taxes,” Waterman said.
Waterman gave a breakdown of the projected budget - which was left in the negatives as of now.
We’re going to be looking at some significant… again some significant imbalances with our budget," Waterman said. "What are we going to do about those red numbers at the bottom.”
Which he gave several potential solutions for including contingency built into the budget and one-time funding like Coronavirus relief funds.
More information on what will actually be on the ballot will be released at the next school board meeting on March 8th.
