would provide enough money to educate 34 students for one year, based on an average cost of 

 $6,038 per year, as determined by information provided by the Montana Office of Public 

 Instruction (see Table 4-19). If the sale does not take place, no students are benefited. 



Table 4-19 

 Number of Students supported by one year's Estimated Revenue 



ACTION 



ALTERNATIVE 



B 



ACTION 



ALTERNATIVE 



C 



ACTION 



ALTERNATIVE 



D 



Estimated school 

 revenue 



$395,700 



$455,400 



$206,100 



Students supported 



65 



75 



34 



The purpose of this table is to give a comparative analysis of the alternatives, not an 

 absolute measure of the number of students that will be supported by the estimated trust 

 income and a nonmonetary indication of the fund benefits. DNRC does not recognize 

 that 95 percent of these funds must be appropriated by the legislature and 5 percent will 

 be allocated to the school trust fund where the earnings are used to provide education 

 funding for students in the future. 

 Source: Montana Department of Revenue, Trust Land Management 



Without a timber harvest, income would be lost to the State and communities. As indicated 

 earlier, wages in the timber industry are higher than average. This allows individuals working in 

 the industry to obtain higher than average ownership of real personal property. Since much of 

 the revenue for school funding comes from property taxation, higher levels of real property 

 ownership should provide for better school funding. 



In addition to these jobs, additional employment is created when the income earned within the 

 timber industry is spent to purchase goods and services elsewhere in the economy. Both of these 

 effects are important since they support other community businesses, such as grocery stores, 

 clothing stores, and gas stations. The loss of the income from this sale would mean not only the 

 loss of the direct income, but the loss of the indirect income as well. 



The economic impact on the schools occurs through ways other than just the direct contribution 

 to the school trust fund from the revenue generated through timber sales. The wood industry 

 pays taxes on the facilities it owns and operates. 



Other Indirect Effects 



Indirect economic impacts are much broader than those identified in the previous section. Some 

 of these impacts are the result of the money from the sales "recycling" through the economy 

 several times. For example, the money spent for groceries by the employee of the timber mill, in 

 part, goes to pay the salary of the grocery store employee, the grocery store employees' use that 

 money to purchase groceries for themselves. This, in turn, generates more income for the 

 grocery store employees, etc. Unfortunately, a model of the county that could be used to 



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