A few posts ago I showed the initial email exchange between me and “Melissa.” She has subsequently written back. She was gracious and expressed her belief that other people in Minnesota pay significantly higher taxes for their schools than we do in Duluth. She is right. This is what I wrote back to her and it does a reasonably good job explaining what motivates me.
Thanks for writing back Melissa,
I would never have gotten into this, let alone run for the school board again, if it hadn’t been for the unprecedented idea to do this without a referendum. It was a terrible mistake. Until now your claim that our elected representatives have the right to do this would never have been countenanced. It is only a series of loopholes that has made this possible and, perhaps, even likely.
I have fought for many tax increases for the schools and would again. But this is colossal.
You asked why I didn’t speak up before. Frankly, I had no idea until this spring that a quarter billion plan was in the works. When I read five months ago that it could be done without a referendum I was so shocked I called Tim Grover five minutes after reading it and asked how that was possible. He seemed as amazed as me. Shortly afterwards I was asked to write about the Red Plan. I reluctantly agreed after being shamed into it “because of my long expertise in the area and my responsibility to use it to enlighten people about what was to happen.” I did some research and took a look at the laws which Johnson Controls was relying on to push this through and was confident that they were misapplying many small provisions to accomplish the biggest bond in state history and that they wouldn’t get away with it without a referendum. I no longer have that confidence. At any rate, four months ago I first wrote about this in the Reader stating my objections to doing this without a referendum.
My further research has led me to conclude that the Red Plan is being promoted by dozens of little deceits on JCI’s part to minimize the magnitude and tax impact of what they are doing. I’m absolutely convinced that this will result in a tax revolt that will make my turbulent days on the School Board look like a walk in the park.
The voters of this town were beating me up when I was on the Board for the mistakes in the building of the New Central. Well, I had nothing to do with that. It had happened thirty years before when I was going to high school in another city. People here have long memories and being tricked into having to build, unnecessarily, an entirely new complex of schools will not be forgotten any time soon.
I sat through two school board meetings this summer and it reminded me why I was so willing to retire four years ago. My God, they are boring! I’m only running to save the School District from naive people who think they were elected with a power the state legislature never meant to give them. If they have the power it is an accident.
If I am elected, and I think that is a foregone conclusion, I will only have one mission in mind. To solve our facilities problems and do it quickly and at a reasonable cost.
You and I can continue to agree to disagree on this and both of us have the best motivations in mind – our children and their future. I think my long history with the public schools, (and I wrote a paper on Minnesota School Finance when I was a college kid 37 years ago. Got an A- on it) is deep enough to see a black hole ahead. I want us to avoid that black hole so I ‘m compelled to try and steer us around it.
My intentions are good. I hope I’m right. I think I am.
Harry
