Meet the Dollar… How the School Bond has benefited Great Falls

Written by an Anonymous Community Member

Meet the dollar that is one of 98 million that the generous people of Great Falls gave to GFPS to make our schools (and our community) a better place.

Did the money stay local? You bet it did…

Let’s start with following where the dollar went for just one of the projects!

GFPS Hires LPW Architecture to design the project and pays them a fee for the work. Part of the process involves getting the big sets of plans printed for the contractors to work off of, so LPW hires Great Falls Builders Exchange to do the printing.

Great Falls Builders Exchange gets their paper from Warden Paper in Black Eagle, to print the big plans. Warden Paper pays one of its employees to send out the invoices.

That Warden employee has a “girl’s night out” and goes to the Sip N Dip to watch the mermaids and have a fishbowl drink with her friends.

The owner of the Sip N Dip decides to take her family out to eat at the Roadhouse Diner, on the day they offer the burgers with the Hempl’s donuts for buns.

The owner of the Roadhouse hires Speaking Socially to help her with her design a loyalty app. The owner of Speaking Socially walks a block over from his office and gets his wife a birthday present from Dragonfly Dry Goods.

The owner of Dragonfly Dry Goods pays her share of the assessment to be part of the Business Improvement District (BID). The BID hires Detailed Construction to build the Pedlet in front of Enbar/The Block which added excitement to downtown and makes visitors want to be here more.

This is where we are also adding money to our economy!

Detailed Construction pays their employees for the work that he does to build the Pedlet. The Detailed employee pays his daughter’s dentist for filling the cavity that she got from eating a few too many Chocolate Covered Cinnamon Bears from Candy Masterpiece.

The dentist then pays a doctor at Benefis, when he twisted his ankle playing D League softball. The Benefis doctor pays Contract Flooring for new flooring in his home.

Contract Flooring hires The Other Guys Wood Flooring to install the new flooring that the doctor purchased. The owner of The Other Guys Wood Flooring treats his wife to a special day at Studio Montage after she wraps up a stressful project at work.
The owner of Studio Montage pays her PTA dues at her kid’s school.

They do so many good things!

The PTA votes to add a new tree to the front of their new school. They buy the tree from Forde Nursery and the owner donates the labor to plant the tree.

The owner of Forde Nursery takes the cute new cat that is hanging around the nursery, to the vet to get his shots.
The vet decides it is time to let his old truck go and upgrade to something more reliable.

The vet heads over to City Motors and they help him find a nice new Chevy truck. City Motors uses the money towards the purchase of the Toyota truck that they donate to the GFPS Foundation,

which in turn the schools use to sell tickets to help fund the programs that tax dollars don’t cover, but are essential to our schools.

It doesn’t end there though. The winner of the truck goes to get license plates. The cost of the license plates includes the MHP fee. MHP uses the money to buy new patrol cars from Bison Ford.

Bison Ford pays their new lot attendant for cleaning up the cars.
The lot attendant pays his rent to a local retired couple who has a few houses that they rent out to supplement their retirement income (Note: they pay property taxes on each of these homes).

The couple has an outlet that needs to be replaced in one of their rentals, so they call Bolt Electric to swing by and fix that.
The owner of Bolt is hungry, so he heads down to Smoked to grab some BBQ from his neighbors that own it.

The son of the owners of Smoked needed a new fly rod, so they headed over to get him one from North 40. The owner of North 40 is in the process of building a new location on the West side of town. He hires Nelson Architects to do the design work.

Nelson Architects hires Woith Engineering to do the Civil Engineering for the site. The owner of Woith Engineering swings by Broadwater Coffee, for his favorite Vanilla Latte, on the way to his weekly construction meeting.

The owner of Broadwater Coffee pays her employee who is in the process of buying her first house on the East end of town.
The deal goes through and the new homeowner will pay her first round of property taxes in November. On that tax bill, she will pay her share of the bond.

And in all of that, the one-dollar never left Great Falls.

It was spent over and over and over and will continue!