5.6. SR 4-15-2002 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Ikiver MEMORANDUM TO: Mayor and Council FROM: DATE: Pat Klaers, City Admi~r~.~ April 15, 2002 SUBJECT: Consider School District Request for Community Recreation Reimbursement As everyone knows, the school district believes it is due funds for community recreation activities over the last nine years or so. Since the organization is/has dissolved, it is now appropriate for the school district reimbursement to be considered. Most everyone involved in the organization is reasonably comfortable with the revenue figures over the past nine years. However, there has been a fair amount of discussion over the accuracy of the expenditures. Issues complicating the situation include the fact that the cities and school districts are on two different fiscal years and that there is a gap between when revenues are received and expenditures occurred for recreation programs. The school auditor spent some time to restate the previous years expenditures and put them into a calendar year format so that we could identify when the shortages were incurred. A great deal of time has been spent by the school auditor and by community recreation employees to analyze 2000 expenditures and revenues. In the end, it was deemed that the figures for revenues and expenditures for 2000 were accurate. It would take a significant amount of additional school auditor and city time to analyze expenditures for each year to see if everything is true and accurate; and in the end we may never reach a consensus on the exact amount due to the school district. If it is assumed that the accounting is correct, then the school (community education) is coming up short financially. It is my belief that the money paid by municipalities for the administration of the community recreation organization came pretty close to coveting expenses. Accordingly, I also believe the shortage that occurred over the past nine years relates mostly to recreation programs. Elk River (and most municipalities) subsidize some recreation programs to make sure they were affordable. If there is a shortage in the recreation programming aspect of the community recreation operation, it means that the subsidy required is more than what was paid. Elk River did a significant amount of programming over the last nine years and, if money is due to the school district, then Elk River has an obligation to repay these funds.