Announcements

Please sign up for Transition Party on Wednesday 6/28 5p-8p, at Bunkers on the deck. Please email Brooke if you plan on attending. Also, CLICK HERE to sign up for programs for the next year. We added a host for each social this year. The host can either host at their home, somewhere in town or whatever you like!

If you have changed any of your contact information, please contact Megan Beard so she can update the directory. Unfortunately, there were no applications for RYLA this year, other clubs were having the same experience, so they opened the applications up to sophomores and freshmen. RYLA Begins in the middle of July, but let Hu know by Monday if you know of anyone. Our foreign exchange student is beginning her trip through the US and will do a presentation on her return. Guatemala Water Project - has been very successful, 11 clubs in western Montana belong to the coalition. Other clubs in the eastern part of the state want to join, but we told them to create their own. Things are moving along smoothly, and going well. We are now offering raffle tickets for the Youth Fundraiser, Brewfest, we’d like people to sell at least 2 books. Each book is $100, or $25 a piece. Our partners for this year’s Youth Fundraiser are Mission Valley Aquatics $5,000, Girls Youth Basketball $2,500, and Soccer $5,000 to (scholarship fund), children who can’t afford the dues, and $3,000 to equipment. 

Heather, an SKC professor, accepted her $500 grant for the Guatemala Math program. She works at SKC and she partners with MathKind to go to Guatemala to provide professional development both in math and language. Bringing native language to native language, fully partnered for a week, and doing home visits. 

Boyd Foster, has recently passed away. 

Program 

Greg moved to the senate last year and wanted to move away from leadership, where he can express his opinion with his experience. There were a lot of bills drafted, he had 110 bills drafted, passed 35 bills, and had one vetoed by the governor. Out of the 1600 bills introduced, about 799 were passed and sent to the governor, compared to 640 in 2021. This year they had higher resolutions or letters associated with the bills. The process was a bit slower this year, but they were able to get done in a timely manner. Income tax went up significantly, property tax went up a little bit. This year's budget was $14 billion and was an increase of 14%, going from fiscal 2024-25 year, 7% each year. It’s like a one-time-only money, because of the surplus 1/3 of the money will go back to the taxpayers, this fall expect an income tax rebate and a $700 property tax rebate. And in 2024, the main distribution of surplus back to taxpayers.

Marijuana money is coming in at about 40-70$ million a year which will help reduce property taxes. Montana produces about $2.5 billion a year in property taxes. If you compare Montana across the country, we are about in the middle for property taxes. We took $1 billion to put into rainy days funds. About 300-400$ million went to the fire fund, in case of fires around the state. Revenues have been growing so fast in the past few years, but if the bottom drops out, we want a nice reserve set aside.  Some of the surplus, about $300 million is going to mental health and state hospitals, dispersed out to local governments.  About $180 million is being used to replace 700 low-security beds at Montana state prison and will be used to add 130 beds. With the high cost of housing, we haven’t really kept up with our demand and should have been building more houses. $25-$50 million will help subsidize interest rates, apartment or workforce houses, and grant to local banks to buy down interest rates. The legislature also minimized rules and regulations across the state, allowing duplexes in single-family residential zoning, but only applies to city zoning areas, and doesn’t apply to HOA. To subsidize housing $200 million is being used to extend water and sewer lines for local governments for subdivisions.

He presented a bill that didn’t go through that he was bummed about but wanted to set up a system that managed septic systems to manage them because we have a lot in Montana and to make sure water quality is okay. 

Half of the money from the Feds is for Medicaid. About 325,000 people in Montana are on Medicaid, which is almost a 1/4. During covid, there were really no rules for Medicaid, but now they’ve restructured and reestablished rules and 40,000 haven’t reapplied. 43% of their budget is for education, 13% for Medicaid, and 25% for incarcerated. Money mostly comes from income tax, about 64%, and income, property, and corporate taxes make up other percentages as well as the marijuana tax. We are getting more reliable on income tax, which necessarily isn’t a good thing in case something happens with the economy. 

Of the passed 35 bills, a lot of the bills have to do with taxes. One had to do with naturopathic doctors. Naturopathic doctors couldn’t prescribe synthetic drugs, but now with this bill, he is hoping now they can. They could prescribe opioids, but not synthetics. Other bills include the pothole reduction act, which gives $15 million back to cities with less than 10,000 population, to fix the roads.