Last night I said I planned on pulling all that budget info on my office floor into some semblance of order. Well, I don’t think I will. I laid awake in bed for at least two hours after composing the last post. I hate stress. Its a manifestation of feeling no control. One way or another I will reclaim control of myself and, paraphrasing the Serenity Prayer, let loose those things beyond my control. So much easier said than done.
Last night I sent the following email to all the members of the School Board just before those sleepless hours in bed.
From: Harry R Welty
Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2014 1:13 AM
To: School Board
Cc: William L Gronseth; William C Hanson
Subject: negotiations and budgetItem 1. I am informing the Board of my intent and determination to sit in through the next negotiations session. Unless there is a state statute empowering a majority of the School Board to prevent me from attending that is what I will do. I hope another School Board member will join me through the negotiation session. My intention is to sit through the session as quiet as a church mouse as I do not have any official capacity to be a spokesman for the Board majority.
Item 2. I want the Finance Department to print out the power point spread sheet that they put on the screen for ten minutes in the first January Budget meeting which showed a projected $9.6 budget deficit in the next few years. We have, as you all know, made some decisions recently that will greatly increase that deficit. With that spread sheet in hand I would then like to have a Budget meeting held to discuss the implications of these projections. What, for instance, do they portend for a hoped for budget surplus?
Its 1:12AM Saturday morning. Now I hope I can get some sleep. Anxiety makes it hard for me to slumber.
Harry Welty
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I can guarantee that this will promote some anxiety among my fellow board members. Good. Why should I have all the fun?
It has already been suggested that the teacher union lead negotiatior will explode in wrath if and when he sees me and stalk out of the meeting. I could only laugh at this prediction. I have fifty or sixty of his old diatribes in my files from my previous time on the Board when he railed and railed that there were no Board members at the negotiations table.
As for the rest of today while I let the Budget mess moulder…..well, I read another chapter of the book Zealot to Claudia. I’m almost half way through it but Claudia will likely have to finish it up on her own since her book club will meet to discuss it Monday.
Better yet, I’ve got an appointment to take my grandson’s and their family to see the next Muppet Movie at 4PM this afternoon. The Duluth Superior Symphony will follow at 7. I’m trying to keep my life in balance so that I can make it alive to my Physical on Monday.
That doesn’t mean I’ve given up on other school district related phenomena. At the moment I’m printing up the 77 page state report on the teacher’s pension programs that I alluded to here. It will join the 47 page report from our Facilities guy Kerry Leider on our energy savings that is part of my growing reading list.
As for the legislation rolling the Duluth teachers pension into the State’s TRA (Teacher’s Retirement Association) I was assured recently that it looked like it was going through. I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then all my teacher readers, like the near panicked one who read my gloomy post on the subject a few days ago, – remember – you still have about five minutes to contact our legislators in St. Paul to urge them to get the job done. One of them, Sen. Roger Reinert, very kindly sent me a copy of Minnesota’s latest “Blue Book” with a note congratulating me on my recent election. Thanks Roger.
The Union may be trying to bleed an onion in the latest contract talks but while doing so they are ignoring the threatened pensions of better than a thousand retired Duluth teachers. Excellent priorities guys! This is one chainsaw too many for me to bother with anymore. This warning will have to suffice. Ready, Frank? Catch!
