Two items for our next school board agenda

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Harry Welty
Date: Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 1:52 PM
Subject: Re: Editorial
To: michael miernicki

Mike,

It is precisely to get over the Red Plan that we must come to understand it. The State Auditor has reported what our Administration never saw fit to report to the School Board. $84 million in “soft costs” or 27% of the over all cost is twice what we were first told. We have no idea how much was paid to whom with this money. I lost an election to one of our Board members back when our Administration was telling everyone that Gary Glass was lying when he said JCI could collect $34 million. The Administration then said that JCI would only be paid $4.5 million.

Trying to figure out if we were cheated out of any of the $50 million over the $34 million first admitted to in court is hardly a refusal on my part to get over the Red Plan. As you wrote in a recent email we have crowded classes and a terrible east/west disparity that we have to deal with. Showing no interest in how that $50 million was spent is irresponsible.

I will be offering two items for the Board to consider at our next meeting. I would like them both placed on the Business Committee agenda for the August meeting.

1st. a resolution seeking that those vendors receiving “soft costs” be told to report how these $84 millions of dollars were spent.

2nd. A motion/resolution/policy change that will assure that the Duluth School District will reimburse any School Board member it places under investigation for legal expenses should the investigation draw a blank.

I’ll thank you in advance for getting this on the agenda for a discussion this month.

Harry

On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 8:59 PM, michael miernicki wrote:

Greetings School Board Members!

I hope you had a chance to read the editorial today in the Duluth News-Tribune – “End lingering Red Plan resentment.” I couldn’t agree more. The Red Plan is over. The schools have been built. It is time we move on to important issues involving our school district. We have a lot of issues to tackle. As the editorial stated: “Construction is done, after all, and the district has other issues now on which it must focus with respect and common purpose: still-tight budgets, always difficult spending decisions, crowded classrooms, and imbalance in student populations and opportunities between western and eastern schools, and unacceptable graduation rates, to name a few.”

I couldn’t have stated it better. We need to move on. We don’t need to go over 14,000 pages of contracts and change orders. We don’t need to hope we can sue Johnson Controls. It is a waste of time and money. Let’s work together to tackle the issues at hand. Let us end the lingering Red Plan resentment.

Best Wishes,
Mike Miernicki

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