"Before the completion of the Big Sky hospital, my husband had to rush guests to Bozeman in the middle of the night for urgent care," Melinda Lewis told Madison County commissioners in January 2025. "It took over an hour to get to Bozeman, and the drive to Madison County hospital would have added at least another hour."
Lewis has owned property in Big Sky for 22 years. She wasn't describing a bad ski season. She was testifying about where her property taxes actually go, and why that destination has almost nothing to do with where she or her neighbors in Moonlight Basin's Silvertip subdivision actually receive care.
Here is the part that should catch the attention of anyone shopping Moonlight Basin right now: when commissioners looked at who in Silvertip had legal standing to even ask for a fix, they found exactly one person.
The County Line Runs Through the Ledger, Not Just the Map
Big Sky sits astride two counties. Moonlight Basin, along with the Yellowstone Club and Big Sky Resort, falls inside Madison County. Meadow Village, Spanish Peaks Mountain Club, and Gallatin Canyon fall inside Gallatin County. That split is old news to anyone who has spent a season here.
What gets less attention is what the county line actually does to a tax bill. Property taxes in Montana fund the county, the local schools, and special districts like hospitals, based on where a parcel sits. A Moonlight Basin owner's dollars flow into Madison County's institutions, which means the Ennis School District and the Madison Valley Hospital District headquartered in Ennis, roughly 45 minutes away by the private Jack Creek Road that Moonlight Basin itself owns, or closer to 90 minutes if you're routing on public pavement. Meanwhile, Big Sky built its own hospital and schools years ago, both sitting a short drive across the county line in Gallatin County. Residents like Yellowstone Club Property Owners Association president Whitney Peyton have described the drive to Bozeman Health Big Sky Medical Center as 10 to 15 minutes. Ennis's hospital is not.
That mismatch is the whole story. A Moonlight Basin buyer is paying into a public health and education system in one direction while actually using one in the other.
The One Signature Problem
Montana law allows a district to lose territory if 51 percent of the "taxpayers residing in and owning property" in the affected area sign a petition. That sounds like a straightforward bar to clear in a subdivision full of multimillion dollar homes. It wasn't.
Most owners in Silvertip hold title through LLCs. When county staff reviewed the petition filed ahead of the January 2025 hearing, they found that structure meant almost nobody in the subdivision qualified to sign. Several residents told commissioners they supported the petition and would have signed it themselves, except their property was owned through an entity rather than in their own name. In the end, the petition carried the signature of one qualifying taxpayer. Commissioners voted 2 to 1 to deny it anyway.
This is worth sitting with if you're considering a purchase in Moonlight Basin and planning to close through an LLC, a trust, or any other entity, which is common practice for privacy and estate reasons among buyers at this price point. That structure can shield your identity. It can also mean you have no personal standing when a local tax fight like this one comes up for a vote, even though your entity is the one writing the check every November and May.
Why the Legislature Had to Get Involved
Big Sky's leaders had tried the local route for years before Silvertip's petition ever reached Virginia City. A broader 2024 attempt to pull the entire Madison County portion of Big Sky out of the hospital district got tangled in a signature dispute and ended up in court. So the fight moved to Helena.
Senate Bill 260, sponsored by Sen. Greg Hertz of Polson, cleared the Senate on a narrow 26-24 vote in April 2025, passed the House Local Government Committee 16-1 later that month, and was signed into law. The bill gives Big Sky residents a defined path to petition out of a special district when services are genuinely inaccessible, rather than relying on county commissioners to make that judgment case by case.
For the hospital piece, the bill phases things out rather than cutting them off. Big Sky currently accounts for roughly 85 percent of the property tax funding the Madison Valley Hospital District collects. Under SB 260, that funding steps down gradually as Big Sky stands up its own wellness district, giving the Ennis hospital eight years to adjust rather than losing the revenue overnight.
The numbers Hertz cited on the Senate floor put the scale in perspective:
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| Total property taxes Big Sky pays into Madison County | $38 million |
| Portion redirected under SB 260's hospital transition | $6 million |
| Remaining in Madison County's general tax base | roughly $30 million+ |
That last line matters for anyone assuming this legislation solves the underlying imbalance. It reallocates a slice of the pie toward services Big Sky residents actually use. It does not shrink what Madison County collects from Big Sky overall, and it does not touch the school district question at all.
The Fight Isn't Over
The hospital transition was the easier half of the bill to negotiate. Schools are the harder one, and that fight is still active as of mid-2026.
SB 260 also lets Big Sky residents petition to leave the Ennis School District, but the path depends on whether Ennis cooperates. If both districts agree, the transfer happens by mutual consent. If Ennis withholds approval, petitioners need signatures from 325 of the 538 residents in the affected area and have to make their case at a hearing, the same process that failed for Silvertip's hospital petition a year earlier.
The numbers explain why Ennis has little incentive to say yes quickly. The Ennis School District's taxable value sits around $619 million, according to the Montana Department of Revenue, and its mill levy for the general fund is just 3.51 mills. Compare that to Twin Bridges School District nearby, which levies 104.9 mills on a tax base roughly one-hundredth the size. Big Sky's Madison County properties are doing an enormous amount of work keeping Ennis's rates low. Losing that base would mean either cutting services or raising mills sharply on everyone left behind.
That's the piece a Moonlight Basin buyer should carry into any conversation about long-term carrying costs. The hospital line is on a fixed eight-year clock. The school line is not on any clock at all. It depends on a subdivision-by-subdivision petition process that has already failed once for a comparable request, and there is no guarantee Silvertip, or any other Moonlight Basin subdivision, succeeds where it didn't before.
What This Actually Means If You're Comparing Moonlight Basin to Other Neighborhoods
A few things worth confirming before you write an offer on a Madison County address in Big Sky:
- Ask your title company or closing attorney whether holding title through an LLC or trust affects your standing in any future special district petition tied to the parcel. Silvertip shows this isn't hypothetical.
- Don't assume the tax line items you see on a current listing's disclosure will hold steady. The hospital district contribution is scheduled to phase down over eight years starting from SB 260's passage in 2025. The school district contribution is unresolved and could shift on a different timeline entirely, or not shift at all if a future petition fails.
- Treat "Madison County" and "Gallatin County" as materially different tax environments inside the same community, not interchangeable Big Sky addresses. A similarly priced home across the line in Meadow Village or Spanish Peaks Mountain Club draws on Gallatin County's school and hospital funding structure, which doesn't carry this Ennis mismatch at all.
- If community representation matters to you, know that Big Sky's Madison County residents have been vocal about paying into districts where they hold little practical voting weight. That dynamic shaped the entire legislative fight and isn't fully resolved by SB 260.
FAQ
Does every home in Moonlight Basin sit in Madison County? Yes. Moonlight Basin, along with the Yellowstone Club and Big Sky Resort, falls entirely within Madison County, while Meadow Village, Spanish Peaks Mountain Club, and Gallatin Canyon sit in Gallatin County.
Will my Moonlight Basin property tax bill go down because of SB 260? Not automatically, and not by much in the near term. The bill redirects about $6 million of the roughly $38 million Big Sky pays into Madison County toward local services, phased over eight years. It doesn't reduce the overall tax base Madison County collects from Big Sky.
What is Jack Creek Road and why does it come up in every article about this? It's a private road owned by Moonlight Basin that connects Big Sky to Ennis, cutting the drive to roughly 45 minutes. Without it, the trip runs closer to 90 minutes on public roads, which is part of why access to Ennis's hospital and schools has been such a central argument in this fight.
A Moonlight Basin address comes with more moving parts than a comparable price point in Meadow Village or Spanish Peaks, not because of the home itself, but because of a tax and governance structure that's still being rebuilt in real time. If you're weighing a purchase there and want someone who tracks these shifts as closely as we track the market itself, reach out to Life in Big Sky. Live Big. Connect with our team.
