Were the Finances of the CDS in the Red?
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.