This Blogs for you, Nick

A couple days ago Nick Lansing challenged me in a letter to the Editor under this headline: ‘Plan B’ needs to be more than two pages long

The group’s “Plan B” was still only two pages long, as posted on its Web site. In recent weeks, Let Duluth Vote planned a spaghetti dinner and launched a symbolic recall petition. Its leader, Harry Welty, found time to post nearly 60 blog entries, appear on a radio show and write columns for the Reader.

This was time well spent?

As a member of a different grassroots group, moveforward-duluth.com, I am frustrated there’s no real “Plan B” to consider as an alternative to the red plan. Everyone has heard about this alternative since winter. Where are the details to prove “Plan B” would be better for my two children – for all of Duluth’s children? The current long-range facilities plan was approved by the state Department of Education. “Plan B” has to be more than two pages to survive. The Department of Education demands details, not spaghetti.

Dear Mr. Lansing.

After having its lawyers spend six weeks pouring over our petition and then wrongly claiming it wasn’t legal before forwarding it to the Attorney General who told us she didn’t care what the District’s lawyers said (The Legal fees probably cost another teacher a job) . . .and then sitting on the favorable reply for another week in an obvious attempt to keep Plan B off the November ballot. . . followed by proclamations that our smaller plan would cost more than the Red Plan. . . followed by dismissive comments that the School Board could ignore the vote anyway. . . followed by increasingly desperate attempts to get hold of our Plan B in what looks to us like a thinly disguised attempt to further sabotage it. . . Let Duluth Vote is working with its own experts on a plan that will pass muster with the Minnesota Dept. of Education.

It will be more than two pages long not that this matters all that much judging by what we heard at the recent community meeting at Ordean.

The architects in charge of drafting a plan for the new Ordean High School explained that the entire JCI Ordean plans presented to the Dept of Education had been scrapped. They were starting from scratch.

So much for JCI’s expertise.

About the author