This post is in response to questions made of me in the last RA Meeting, on the 11th of July. The transcript of the meeting can be found here: http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2985
These questions had to with whether or not I was correct when I made this statement:
[9:27] Sonja Strom: Our finances have been slowly improving over the last six months, and now we are again in the black,
[9:28] Sonja Strom: no longer in the red,
[9:28] Sonja Strom: which means that now we have some money we can spend
Especially there seem to have been questions about my use of the term “in the red.”
One thing is, I believe there may have been some misunderstanding about my use of the term “in the red.” I never intended to say that the CDS had reached the bottom of its funds. What I was trying to say was (only) that for a while we experienced an average negative revenue flow, in other words that there was a time during which the community was spending more than it was bringing in - the result of this negative balance being that for a while we paid for our expenses with our Reserve.
My use of the term “in the red” is described here http://financial-dictionary.thefreedict ... in+the+Red as:
“Operating in the Red: Describing a business that continues operations while losing money. A business may continue to operate in the red due to the extension of a loan or credit line, or because of cash flows that exist despite losses. Obviously, a company can only operate in the red for a certain period of time before making a profit or declaring bankruptcy.”
Did the CDS go through a time when it "continued operations while losing money"? When I went to the RA Meeting I believed this was the case. Although I was speaking in general terms when I made this statement, I did want to be accurate in my description of the finances of the CDS. My understanding of the finances was questioned, however, and I promised to give a response to those questions here in the Forum. Currently I am investigating the issue, in order to give a more complete and accurate description of our past finances than I was able to in the moment of questions being asked in the meeting.