The county budget will be the big topic of discussion at today's joint meeting of the school board and county commissioners.

County Manager David Cooke will explain his budget, which would cut spending, cut jobs, freeze pay raises and keep the property tax rate flat. He'll also mention why he's recommending giving the school board $3.3 million less than the $316.8 million it has requested.

The meeting will start at 9 a.m. in the ground floor conference room of the Wake County Office Building, 337 S. Salisbury Street in Raleigh. It's open to the public.

County Manager David Cooke isn't recommending giving the school system the full amount it has requested.

Cooke proposed today that county commissioners give around $313 million in school funding. The school board is asking for $316.8 million.

You can see this as a cut, or as Cooke views it, a gain for the schools. If you factor in the $5.7 million that the school board returned to the county late last year, Cooke is proposing an increase over the $310.5 million baseline budget number.

School officials have been focusing on how their request is only slightly over the $316.2 million that commissioners agreed to provide last year.

The school board will try to sell its request for $316.9 million to cash-strapped county commissioners today.

The school system's budget request will dominate the discussion at today's joint meeting of both boards. While the school system gets most of its funding from the state, it wants to get as much as it can from the county to avoid deeper cuts.

Depending on how you look at it, the school system is either asking for a $700,000 increase from the county or a $6.4 million bump. That's because the school board agreed in December to give back $5.7 million to help the county deal with this year's fiscal shortfall.

It looks like the school system will be more conservative in how much money it requests from county commissioners in the new budget.

As noted in today's article, school leaders say they'd be content with getting just a $6.6 million increase from commissioners this year. That's far less than the $54.7 million increase that the school board unsuccessfully sought last year.

But also as noted in the article, Harold Webb, chairman of the board of commissioners, said it might not be possible to even give $6.6 million more. Doing so would require either cutting some other part of the budget or increasing property taxes.

It's going to be a tough love kind of meeting today between the school board and county commissioners.

As noted in today's article, County Manager David Cooke said he’ll talk bluntly to school board members as he walks them “step-by-step” through the limitations on borrowing more money in the face of steep declines in tax revenues.

“It gets down to what you can afford given the current realities of the economy,” Cooke said in the article. “It’s not that we like having to make these tough choices, that’s just where we are.”

There are some big question marks that could upend the new multi-year reassignment plan.

As noted in today's article, school administrators are assuming that funding will still come through for the 10 new schools slated to open by 2012. They're also assuming that the district will win the year-round lawsuit.

If either or both don't go as hoped, the plan will need a major rewrite.

Will the school board have to cut $5.7 million due to the county's revenue shortfall?

As noted in today's article by Michael Biesecker, County Manager David Cooke suggested Monday that all county departments take a 1.8 percent funding cut. If implemented, it would mean the school system would have to cut $5.7 million to make up for a projected county revenue shortfall of at least $17 million.

If the school system is spared any cuts, other county departments — including such key operations as the sheriff’s office, EMS, and the 911 call center — will have to make deeper cuts of 4 percent.

School board member Beverley Clark had a message on Tuesday for all those Broughton High School parents who had been lobbying for the magnet program to be saved.

Clark said the Broughton parents, who had bombarded board members with e-mail messages and calls, need to show the same level of energy during the budget season. She said the parents need to urge the county commissioners to provide the school system with adequate funding.

Clark warned that next year's budget negotiations could be very difficult. Considering that County Manager David Cooke warned this week that the county is facing a potential $17 million budget shortfall due to the global crisis, it's not lookiing good for a big boost in school funding next year.

The prospect of a 2009 bond issue is getting less likely as the financial news gets grimmer each day.

As noted in today's article by Michael Biesecker, county commissioners and school board members got a whole lot of bad economic news at Wednesday's joint meeting. The county's inability to sell $370 million worth of school bonds makes another big 2009 bond issue a hard sell.

“There’s no market for long-term debt, at least not under terms we’re willing to pay,” said County Manager David Cooke in the article.

The national financial crisis could hold up some school construction projects.

As noted in today's article by David Bracken and Michael Biesecker, Wake County has postponed the sale of $454 million in bonds over the past two weeks. Of that amount, $370 million is for school construction from the 2006 bond.

Wake County Manager David Cooke said the county has enough cash that the delay in selling bonds will not have an immediate effect on projects already under way. But things get tricky if the delay gets too long for borrowing the money.