Well, I I this this d these donations at the centennial celebration were so cool. I am so was so pleased to see all of these memories and um you know on being able to be presented to be shared with everybody.

I just want to thank the community in general. When we get donations, it's as a government entity, it we as a school district can accept donations and we're excited to see that our community is supportive. Um, and if you want to donate, please do because this is a great great opportunity to support our district and our school.

The biggest thing that we had to discuss uh I think in my opinion was the request [snorts] to make this more than one year. But as a board um during our work session we did discuss the um the merits of having it be one year and as a board I believe that that is um where we are all sitting at this time.

I just want to let the public know that the collaboration that we have with our our um police department also ensures that we don't have a cost. This is not something we pay for where other districts have a cost to this. Um because of how we're structured, there is no cost to us. And yet we still have pretty much the same service as every other district.

I do just want to emphasize that this is an agreement that continues to evolve yeartoear... I'm very comfortable knowing that we have a one-year agreement that we can continue to have those important conversations and think about, um, how this partnership can best serve our schools over time.

at first I um thought that the multi-year contract sounded uh beneficial, but then we had such insightful conversation and I now feel strongly that having this more frequent opportunity to reassess the role um allows the board to respond sooner if there's a need.

This year we as usual we had to make some inflationary increases in the property values for you of course buildings and business personal property that was about three and a half%. Um but with that we you know we still were able to see a small property insurance decrease which is the biggest uh biggest variable in the total insurance package.

The total premium renewal at 362,30622 it's about a 1% increase. Um so a 1% increase in uh insurance is fantastic um as we've seen over 20% increases in recent history.

I guess my my biggest concern is having enough coverage with, for instance, the AI stuff that's coming out now. We just saw a company accidentally hack some other companies using their AI um development and that just it scares the Jesus out of me. And so I want to make sure that we're covered for, you know, I know the cyber liability may be moving upward in the next few years as the AI gets more prevalent.

I just want to thank you for the hard work that you've put into this. I know there was um some areas of just, you know, contention and having to negotiate and we really appreciate your your efforts and um just just really appreciate that.

The biggest change in our general fund levy is really in enrollment. Enrollment went down... our referendum now adjusts with inflation. Um so this referendum number three that is our voter approved operating levy. You can still see that even though our our um enrollment went down um our revenue still went up a little bit. So that's the importance of that inflationary adjustment.

declining enrollment is not just something that Columbia Heights Public Schools is fighting with. This is something that is across the metro and largely across the state. So this is not anything we are not unique in that sadly.

We're talking about the the current voter approved levy um and uh taking action here today so that we're able to um capture what what was expected um in terms of of revenue.

As a new board member, I want to know that um the information that we're voting on that I understand it and that it's reliable. I really trust and appreciate the presentations that you give.