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without merging. And try to eliminate the disparity of funding without merging, as discussed in the report. One question I had about it was when we were talking about more gradual elimination of the district tax and more gradual phasing in of the countywide tax of some sort. The hold harmless marker would be $1,167 per pupil generated in the Chapel Hill system that we could generate countywide for all the students. But what I wondered is what it meant to hold Chapel Hill system harmless. It sounded like, in the more gradual phasing in, that the goal was to be sure to generate at least $1,167 per pupil because if you just did that, then you might be, I think you even put it in quotes "holding Chapel Hill harmless". I think you would hold harmless, but the question is are you actually not harming Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools? I think that what we would like to see in any thing we do is some kind of win-win situation where both school systems come out better. So my question is could you do an analysis, look back at the past 5 years, which I guess is the 5 years spoken about in the merger report, and look at the trends on increase in the per pupil funding and the current expense funding. I think that the per pupil funding has increased each year. And work out, if you look at the past 5 years and in the past 5 years the trends of increase were such, whatever they were, and work out what that trend of increase would be in the next 5 years. And find out what you would actually do to not change the effect on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro system, while improving the Orange County system. In other words, if the effect is really to freeze the per pupil allocation of $1,167 which is sometimes the definition of hold harmless, you wouldn't protect the Chapel Hill System from harm because you would have essentially frozen the amount, the per pupil amount for each year. I just wanted you to work it out to see if the Chapel Hill system received the same increases over the next 5 years as they did the last 5 years, what would the the amount of tax increases in the two districts be to do that? Do you understand the question? John Link: I think I understand and of course I think it raises a good point. We will be happy to go back and look at it. What I understand your question to be, what were the relative increases in both systems an a per pupil bases including the district tax, and in the future, should the board pursue either merger or an equity funding process? The holding harmless for bath systems, of course, would be addressed in the general fund budgeting each year for current expense. That is, holding harmless or addressing additional new needs each year is of course done through the budget process where the Commissioners act presently on two school budgets where in the future if it were merged you would act on one. But as you do now you would take a look at what the requests are what the relative status of the rest of the County budget is and make a decision accordingly. But you raised a good question, so I think it is good for us to respond back to that question Commissioner Gordon: Just a general comment. One of the reasons that the district tax has been raised in the last few years has been to open the new schools in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro system. And I'm not talking about equipment, I'm talking about the opening expenses. Whenever you open a new school, I'm sure you are all aware that it casts more money in personnel because you generally would have a new principal, assistant principal, resource teachers. You don't necessarily have more teachers, except classroom teachers, to address growth because they can just be moved. You only have to address the growth in student enrollment. But when you open a new school you do have expenses and those can be large, I mean half a million to a million dollars. In the Chapel Hill Schools we have addressed that by increasing the district tax, so that only Chapel Hill taxpayers have paid the operating expenses to open schools. In the Orange County School System, there is no district tax so the operating expenses to