Missoula County Fiscal Year 2026 Budget

You are not only taxing people out of their homes, you are making my home too expensive to sell which I am attempting to do in order to get out of this excessive property tax. AND, I live in a Red state where people want to move.

Between the country and the city you guys are basically killing us. Outrages that if I don't meet your demand ofor an 8% increase I will lose my home of 40 years.

At the rate of increase in property tax proposed for 2006 property taxes will double in the next 10-11 years? What’s the plan for stabilizing property taxes?

Commissioners, Thank you for taking my comment regarding the proposed FY 26 budget. Over the past 5 years, my Missoula County property taxes have increased 38%. My income has not increased even close to that. I cannot sustain that increase and I do not believe that many other Missoula County taxpayers can either. Now you are considering another 7% increase. You are taxing those of us on fixed incomes out of our homes.

If you honestly want input on where to cut spending, then you will make all expenditures available to all citizens without having to pay to get that information. As an example, on August 12th, I requested an extract of Missoula County credit card transactions including date of purchase, merchant tat purchase was made from, amount and department or employee card is assigned to for the final ten months of fiscal year 2024. I was told that I would be charged $396.78 to provide this information to me, because the information I was requesting is not readily available and staff would need to manually comb through different systems and compile the information in a spreadsheet. How can you justify approving the payment of these charges if the basic information of what is purchased and for how much is not readily available? Missoula County has over one million dollars in credit card transactions each year and to the best of my knowledge, Missoula County still is not using credit cards with cash back options. You are leaving tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on the table every year.





The prior year I paid to obtain 26 months of credit card transaction data and I found tens of thousands of dollars in questionable expenditures including numerous transactions at local restaurants, coffee shops, donut shops, cookie stores, bakeries, flower shops and even personal expenditures.

Credit card spending and all claims paid by Missoula County including where the expenditure is made and what is purchased should be available at no charge to any taxpayer, as should a list of all employee positions, not by name of employee, but by name of position with annual wage and benefit paid to that position. I would like to know how many employees were hired as a result of the acquisition of Marshall Mountain and what their wages and benefits are. I would like to know how much the addition of`the Lands Department cost. I would like to know why there are user fees for county owned Larchmont Golf Course, but there are user fees for Marshall Mountain.

Let us the taxpayers see where our money is being spent. Then and only then will there be the transparency needed for taxpayers to have a proper say in where our money is spent.

Totally against your latest proposed budget. Everybody gets a wage increase except folks on a fixed income. Retired from Missoula County and still have to work to make ends meet. You give away the fair. You give away the bus. We pay for it - I know! Tighten the purse strings like I have to do - do not increase taxes.
Steve Earle

Totally against your latest proposed budget. Everybody gets a wage increase except folks on a fixed income. Retired from Missoula County and still have to work to make ends meet. You give away the fair. You give away the bus. We pay for it - I know! Tighten the purse strings like I have to do - do not increase taxes.
Steve Earle

I am in support of a large portion of what the county does and always hope for success. I know there are a lot of great programs there and hard working staff. Unfortunately, we have reached a point where it is no longer sustainable. The idea of starting with just what it costs to maintain is not working. We need to take a hard look at what is in the base. Just like at home when our expenses outpace our income, we have to look at what the necessities are. While items we might cut have value we can’t do it all. I urge you to prioritize foundational services like public safety, infrastructure, basic public health.

I also encourage you to adopt a policy of only growing your budget at the rate of newly taxable value. I feel we have reached the point where the average citizen can no longer afford increased taxes. Just because the state says our home values have increased does not mean each of us is wealthier.

I know the commissioners have a hard job and no matter what you do folks will be unhappy. I just hope you will find a way to avoid a yearly tax increase.

Thank you and good luck.

It would be great if you did two things:
1)Quit using your base budget as the starting point for budget development. I

t seems you assume that everything is working at top efficiency, that staffing is not excessive. There is no way for the public to gauge the effectiveness or efficiency of operations. Tough to do, I know, but it would be helpful to start with a base budget no larger than the previous year. Why not. At least tradeoffs might be more visible.

2) I recommend funding the following new requests:

Kitchen Cook (jail)- $76,282
Community Health Workers - $56,698
Sanitarian - $83,456
Information Systems (Technology)
Deputy Operations Director - $135,237
Support for sheriff’s deparment
county jail
animal control
Courts


Items I feel should dropped:

Open Lands Specialist - $99,532
Would fund a new position responsible for countywide open space planning. (small agricultural land conservation program.?Why) How does this benefit most of us?
Parks, Trails and Recreation - Promote Maintenance Specialist to full-time - $69,350 There is not much to do part of the year. This feels like bureaucratic growth..The county does not need more permanent personnel to contribute to the "base budget",
Decrease contribution to City of Missoula scholarships - $5,845. This seems to be a very low impact item and I think it does not provide benefit to most of us.
Please, NO to Planning, Development and Sustainability Climate Action Program Coordinator - $96,620
Would fund a new staff position to increase capacity of the Sustainability division, including implementing the carbon neutrality in county operations plan. This is not going to benefit the vast majority of us.
Public Works - NO Increase to contracted services - $10,000
No- Why? Would increase the County’s annual contribution to Climate Smart Missoula from $35,000 to $45,000.
Purchase Crusher -$2.4 million why not purchase crushed gravel as needed?  Why would we want local government competing with private businesses?

2) I think most of us would not feel a thing if you did not convert temporary employees to full time, forego the many of the requests for new funding. social justice The spending on Social justice and advocacy are nice to do, but not part of necessary county operations.

The part of the budget commissioners control has grown substantially. I think it is not too much to ask for a break and perhaps a less progressive approach to County Government.

If the library is in the city limits, why are the FTEs for it in the county budget?

Missoula is growing too fast! We cannot keep expecting taxpayers to keep footing the bill for projects that only benefit certain people. Taxes are paid so we can live and thrive in a community with proper schools,hospitals, etc. Things necessary to advance our city. I'm not impressed with how our city is currently managed. It seems the council doesn't want to listen to the very people who voted them in. You're taxing people out of their homes. In excessively helping one group of individuals, you're making others lose their homes. Please, listen to the ones who live & work here.