Hi Next Gen'ers,

Straight to the Point

Live to Sine Die Another Day...first time going into the newyear?

Budget Problems - They Roll Down Hill

NGSB New Changes this Year!

All the Details

Live to Sine Die Another Day...but when?!  The rumors are swirling around downtown that this session may go as far out as October.  The budget is passed and for the most part our school finance items will become effective with the new school but the Sine Die has impact on the General Effective Date for bills so these unnecessary delays will have some consequences.  I believe the Capitol Times was reporting that we haven't had a session go beyond July 1 since prior to 1960.  It's beginning to feel like one of those horror movies that have 12 sequels...you know, you think the session is dead but Monday morning you come in and see an email that it's alive again but by Friday it's on a two week recess so you think it's dead again...then the budget is passed so you know it has to really be dying this time - only it doesn't!

JLBC has put out the notice that revenues are now below their forecasted numbers.  This is also while the new ESA estimates are showing a projected cost of $900 million and certain State leaders are saying that it is still a 10% savings.  If the student was never in the public system then it's complete increase in expense to the State.  If the student was in the East Valley then it is still an increase to the State since they receive little and in some cases no State Aid.  If the student is anywhere else then it's probably close to a breakeven for the State.  The only possible scenario where the State can claim a savings would be a pure State Aid District like Fort Huachuca.  It's like a holiday weekend savings at a clothes store, sure your bank account is empty but think of how much worse it would be if you bought all of the same stuff on Wednesday.

On a serious note, you can consider this event as the first indicator that the long awaited recession is actually starting to arrive. During the Great Recession some of the initial issues were revenues under forecast and housing prices declining.  CSF hit it's all time high...shooting from memory, I believe it was $401...actual revenue wasn't anywhere close...the following year we dropped the CSF amount but not enough because revenues came below that number then we had the great compromise of two years at 120 while everything bottomed out.  We also had declining Assessed Values kicking in around the same time.  If you are going out for Bonds this year just keep your language as vague as your legal team will allow(ask for the Jeremy language) so you have the right amount of flexibility.  You never know when you need to shift all of your furniture, technology and equipment over to Bond to free up Capital so you can move your DAA over to M&O, just saying.

NGSB is online and all of the newsletters are under the Resources > Blog tab.  You will be getting a quote by next week along with the W9 for the new company.  You will be able to do your coding checks and keep running your AFR through the website.  Your login credentials will be supplied once you send over the PO to renew with the new company.  There is also going to be a tool for On Demand Compensation Studies.  We are literally going through everyone's websites, finding their salary schedules and loading all of that data into a single database with a dashboard over the top of it so you can pick and choose your comparison Districts.  It's going to be real slick.  It's a ton of work but if we can get at least 5 - 10 Districts each year then it should do well enough to cover the labor cost and keep improving it.  

I thank you all for your continued support and a lot of what you have provided this past year made it possible to build the website with the online program!  The goal is to keep building us better tools we can use and keeping those tools affordable.  We have a list of tools that are on the way but I will wait until they are further along in development before I go over them.  Happy Monday everyone and I hope you are enjoying your summer!

Jeremy

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