Kelly

Can we reduce the special education expenditures?

We can't because we are being reimbursed for items two years earlier.

[By the way, I'm not sure if our computer batteries will last long enough to make it all the way through.]

We are mandated to provide a certain level of special education funding.

Fiscal report: Fiscal is a committee that came about after the levy failed in 2001. A lot of community members did not understand the financing and so this committee was formed by community leaders with a financial background.

Purpose was to try to make the fiscal reports more readable and let the business people know what we spend money on.

We can't seek an emergency levy until we go way negative. The MN department of education will not allow a school district to operate in red. If you are, you have to submit a plan or the state will take over your budget.

You sometimes have to do short-term borrowing.

Dean: The data looks very different if you take into account the full amount from tax payers -- the exhibit ONLY shows the state calculated revenue.

Kelly is explaining which tables are state based. We have had increasing revenues above and beyond the CPI based on the market basket we all experience.

If we continue to spend beyond the CPI - at what point in time do we take responibility for spending dollars above and beyond?

Dean appears be arguing fiscal conservativism.

Ed - since we have never borrowed or been in debt then there is no problem. You make it sound like we are being unaccountable.

Dean - the point is that we have financial projects that show that we would be exactly where we are today and that we maybe should have been more or less agressive earlier. We've spent down a 35 million dollar fund balance. We saw this coming and now we are having to cut $16 million. We saw it was coming -- why didn't we. If we are approving contracts that we can not afford in the long run. It was the one piece we had control over that we did not do differently.