Busy day Committee of the whole

Actually, this post is about my quick interview with a KDLH reporter about tonight’s Committee of the Whole meeting. She had called me just before the Zoning Board met and I thought 1PM would give me plenty of time to get back home. I was still chomping on a McDonald’s snack wrap when she knocked on the door.

It was a short interview on my sunny back patio. She wasn’t very familiar with the issues so I gave her some background on tape which she’ll have a dickens of a time pulling a sound bite out of.

I basically told her that we were happy to make the presentation to show that we had given a lot of thought to how to fix up our schools for $100 million less than the Red Plan and honor the 75 words of the petition that our plan is based upon. She asked about the alphabet plans the District talks about B and D (I’m not sure where C went) and I told her that although our Plan B had been rechristened D by the District it was entirely consistent with the petition language. I explained that because it was stretched out over ten years some portions of it might be dropped so that taxpayers could enjoy some refunds.

It remains to be seen if our current Board asks any questions of our Plan tonight. I wrote up answers to Move Forward Duluth’s seven questions but I don’t think our presenter tonight Art Johnston was very interested in them. He’s a smart cookie and will enjoy answering any questions thrown his way by the School Board. He thought the MFD questions were leading, weak and based on faulty assumptions just like I did.

Of course, I told the Reporter that as far as I was concerned the Board’s listening to us after a year’s delay and a month before they cram five years worth of construction into three. I told her it suggests that the Board is only listening to us because they Attorney General of Minnesota expects them to go through the motions.

That’s OK. I’m looking forward to the presentation.

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