I'll just say a little bit we do have an increase in the levy but we'll talk a little bit about that doesn't necessarily mean an increase for the local property owner because of some of the Dynamics that happen with how school taxes work in Minnesota.

most of those formulas as as you're aware are driven by per student fund or per student so your students drive your funding it's not driven by your tax base like other municipalities for a school it's driven by what your student enrollment is doing.

the legislative session last in 23 authorized a 4% increase in year one and a 2% increase in year two and the top bar represents inflation and you'll notice that bar now is widening and everybody knows if you go to the grocery store right and you're purchasing your food that cost is going up so over that time the last two years we've seen north of 6% inflation and District's budgets are going up by about four and two based on that formula increase.

even though the levy has went up about 3.8% the district taxes are actually estimated to go down and there is a reason for it Metro districts are part of a fisc the fiscal disparities program or or sharing tax sharing pool right and that's built on a one-year leg so as the district's referendum increased last year the contribution for the pool this year which is coming on a leg the district's getting a larger contribution of that shared pool which is impacting the district's taxes and actually lowering them so the district is receiving a larger share of the fiscal disparities pool this year so so good news right so the district's overall levies is going up but taxes are going down for property owners.

I'll just say this as an auditor I love that result higher than expected revenues lower than expected expenditures if I could say that every time at a school board meeting we'd all be really happy.

this is a policy that as a board should be hyperfocused for you if you're going to focus on one number that came out of this audit it should be that one if you if you're looking at Direction and you're concerned about the district or at least what how should I make financial decisions if you could see that number and look at it every time and go yep we're headed in the right direction or if we're not within that realm we should be considering well what's next so that's a certainly a very very positive item.

unfilled positions unfilled positions that is a challenging environment to work in as a school to know that you can't fill the positions I.E third grade as you were talking about earlier that's challenging right it's happening everywhere so the fact that you're under budget hard it's hard to deal with that's just the fact that's inherently what you're dealing with.

um is this within our budget

this is an annual item that we do that if there is a need for a special election we combine our polling places in order to reduce expenses this is a little bit different this year than what we have done in the past as we are um uh naming our polling places as the Highlander Center Gym um get the the schools portion of the gym um and having one uh one of the special precincts in one half and one of the special precincts in the other half that is um one the reason for that is so that we do not have general public in our secured school buildings um during the school day so it provides added safety um for our students and staff um on those special election days.