January money questions

• If you saw last night's City Council meeting or read today's Telegram and Gazette coverage, you know that the City Manager was very carefully explicit in excluding school money from the discussion of the 10% cut to this year's state aid money. School aid comes in from the state separately from "local aid," and so far, the school aid money is safe. That means that we won't be laying off teachers midway through this school year so far (no such luck with other departments). Keep a very close eye on this one.
  
• And, of course, this is shaping up to be a very bleak spring for the fiscal year 2010 budget.
• The stimulus money that is much talked about on the federal and state level also had some discussion last night. The memo that the City Manager forwarded to the City Council included (as you'll see here) $20 million for 50+ public buildings for energy conservation. Word has it that's schools; I'm seeing if I can discover what projects that would include.
• I just caught this from last night's Daily Worcesteria coverage of the City Council meeting: Rushton is saying a lot, but the most relevant point is that the schools need to be involved as much as possible about potential cuts as they will be most effected.