Five little people (I’m one of them) are bringing suit against two monsters. The first is the Duluth School District which has $170 million of our tax money to fight us with including $250,000 recently set aside for lawyers. (The School Board claimed it was set aside to help develop Let Duluth Vote’s Plan B but this was a lie) Our other adversary is Johnson Controls a corporate behemoth with twice as many employees as Duluth has residents. Its 100 times bigger than our Minnesota Power/Allete.
We five are all taxpayers whose School Board violated state law by giving JCI a no-bid contract for $300 million despite School Board policies requiring competitive bidding. (Let Duluth Vote would have liked to be the plaintiff but because it isn’t a taxpayer it doesn’t have “standing” to go to court. So, a suicide squad had to be found to go behind enemy lines. My Grandfather did that once during World War I. He later got shot up and earned a Congressional Medal of Honor. If George Robb could do that for our Democracy Harry Robb Welty can face down a couple bullies in court.
I’m not worried that my fellow Duluthians will let us go into battle without a little ammunition of our own.
So far over 3,000 Duluth School District residents have donated to Let Duluth Vote which is paying for our attorney. JCI will be able to spend millions in court to break us financially in order to keep their ill gotten, no-bid contract. It will do them no good if the court finds their contract to build the Red Plan unlawful. If, as we expect, it is found to be unlawful we will ask the court to void it so as to prevent $200 million tax payer’s dollars from being spent on an illegal project.
After paying for our attorney Let Duluth Vote can’t afford to mail out many more fund raising letters or take out ads in the paper. (When we do the School District just buys a bigger one to rebut us. (However, when they set up a meeting to ask parents for feedback on boundary changes they didn’t spend a nickle to advertise it, not so much as a flyer home with kids even though they could have done it at no cost with their automatic dialing system)
If our friends will help us spread these envelope pails around town we believe Duluth will stand behind us and send us money to fight these two Goliaths. If you could place one of these wherever people gather or on the counter of your business we’ll bring JCI to its knees. Send me an email and we’ll get one of these to you.
Thanks Duluth.
