Lima resident and Sophomore Kiersten Bernard remembers hearing conversations about her school’s uncertain future back in sixth grade.
"It honestly broke my heart. You know, I have very deep roots here, and so it made me pretty upset," she says.
Beaverhead County is the largest in the state, but only about 10,000 people live here. Two-thirds of it is also made up of public lands. That can make it hard for the county to collect enough taxes to fund the school.
The federal government does pay the county for most of those public lands, but it’s not paying the full amount of taxes for the Red Rocks Lakes Wildlife Refuge. That’s a 39,000-acre expanse of public land in the county filled with rugged wild terrain along the Idaho border.
Bernard and her peers say they want to fight for their school. She wants to write letters to her congressmen, and learn more about the wildlife refuge impacting her community.
"And you know, as a kid, I couldn't do anything about it. And now that I'm getting older, it's easier to advocate," Bernard says.
When the federal government owns land, like a wildlife refuge or national forest, local governments can’t collect taxes on it because no one can live there. But the federal government does pay the county based on the land’s value and other factors like the population.
The value of public lands like the wildlife refuge near Lima have been skyrocketing, especially in wealthier communities like Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Because the land values are so high in those wealthier towns, the federal government won’t pay the full bill.
Mark Haggerty is an energy and environment expert with the Center for American Progress.
"Those things are worth so much money if you use taxable value, that it just has exploded the formula and Congress is like, ‘we can't afford it, we're not going to pay for it,’" Haggerty says.
Congress is now paying only about 20% of the total value of national wildlife refuges across the country.
"When Congress doesn't pay for it, everybody gets a proportional share. So it's not Beaverhead County that's the problem," Haggerty says.
In short, Haggerty says Beaverhead County and other remote counties like it are getting shortchanged. Those places don’t have the property tax base to make up for the lower federal payments and don’t have other federal funding from things like oil and gas leases to fill the gap.
County Commissioner Mike McGinley has been lobbying Congress to pay its full tax bill for years. He says Beaverhead county is owed about $2 million.
"Every property owner in this Lima school district makes up that $2 million that hasn't been paid by the federal government," he says.
McGinley has brought legislation to Montana’s congressional delegation to carry to D.C., but none have made it across the finish line.
He says tackling this issue is hard because this niche tax formula problem only affects a handful of counties in the country. It’s also hard to understand quickly.
"Lima School does not have enough money to sue the federal government on it. So that is the job of a county commissioner – to hammer on the federal agencies to know that. And as they change people back there, it starts all over again."
Back in Lima, Erin Montgomery, a School Board member and mother of a student, walks through the halls of Lima’s school.
"So this has traditionally been first and second grade. Next year it's going to be kindergarten through second grade," Montgomery says.
The schoolhouse sits in the heart of the mile-wide town. It’s two stories, with the cafeteria in the center.
"This is our little cafeteria down here. We're still looking for a cook," she points out.
Montgomery began diving into this issue three years ago. The school has another threat to its funding.
"The concern for the last administration here was that our enrollment numbers would get so low that we wouldn't be able to pay to keep the high school open," she says.
If their enrollment numbers reach a low enough point, schools can lose state funding, forcing kids to go to another district. But that wouldn’t work here. For Lima, that nearest school is at least 50 miles away.
Because bussing kids that far isn’t practical, the school plans to apply for what’s called “Isolation Status,” which would allow it to continue getting state funding. Montgomery says they’ll likely reach that point in about three years.
"However, that also gives us three years to keep working."
She hopes to utilize this time to convince Congress to pay the county enough to keep the school’s doors open long term.
