Missoula County Fiscal Year 2025 Budget
The Missoula County commissioners voted to approve the FY 25 budget at their Sept. 5 public meeting. Click here to see an interactive breakdown of department funding, expenses, revenue and more. View the final budget presentation and other budget documents under the Documents section to the right.
Expected revenue from property taxes to fund the budget is $73.6 million, a 4.2% increase over last year. This $3 million increase in tax revenue mainly covers the increase to the County’s base budget needed to sustain current services and operations. Increases to wages and healthcare costs for employees accounts for most of the base budget increase.
Tax impacts
The tax impacts of the adopted budget will differ depending on where a resident lives within the county. For property within Missoula city limits, residents will pay an additional $10.15 a year in County taxes for every $100,000 in assessed property value, or about 85 cents a month.
For properties outside Missoula city limits, residents will pay an additional $12.87 in County taxes for every $100,000 in assessed property value, or $1.07 a month. You can find the assessed value (also called market value) of your home by visiting itax.missoulacounty.us and look under the “2023 Value” box.
These residents will pay different amounts because property owners are taxed differently depending on where their property is located. All Missoula County property owners, including those who live within the limits of the City of Missoula, pay countywide taxes. In addition to the countywide taxes, property owners outside Missoula city limits pay county-only taxes (rather than city taxes).
Residents can use $100,000 as a point of reference to easily calculate the estimated taxes they’ll pay to the County. For example, if a resident has a home outside city limits valued at $520,000, they would multiply $12.87 times 5.2 to arrive at the estimate of $66.92 in County taxes.
Budget requests
In addition to the base budget, the commissioners approved new requests to improve services and operations. The bulk of these are one-time requests that must be paid for with savings from previous fiscal years, so they do not impact future property tax bills. A handful of new requests to fund ongoing improvements, including new staff, were also approved.
Budget requests requiring new property tax revenue are listed below, and staff presented them to the commissioners at administrative public meetings in July and early August. Recordings of those presentations are available on the County's YouTube channel. The Aug. 1 presentation on the preliminary budget also included an overview of outstanding requests.
Budget overview
Each year, the Missoula County commissioners and county staff work together to create an annual budget for county services and operations. The budget is created on the fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30 of the following year. The fiscal year 2025 budget will cover July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025. Residents can watch a presentation online to learn how the County decides what to prioritize in its budget and how the county budget impacts property taxes.
The budget includes salaries for staff, department operations, capital projects like building renovations and improvements, material costs like asphalt for the road department and more.
We invite you to read "The Budget and Your Taxes" to see how the budget process affects what you pay in property taxes, ask us any questions you may have, and follow this project page to stay up on future engagement opportunities around the budget.
Have questions about the FY25 budget? Ask us!
Read over the frequently asked questions on the right hand side, and if you don't see an answer to your question there, ask it below! We will try to respond within five business days.
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