A few minutes ago I had to explain to the Tribune’s reporter just how the Bakk legislation works. I was able to do this because I spoke with an expert in the Minnesota Dept. of Education who I sent the verbiage to.
The $125 million figure probably was plucked out by Tom Bakk because Yvonne Prettner Solon, David Ross and Dr. Dixon et. al. keep claiming that the Red Plan will only cost that much money to local taxpayers. That’s a load of hogwash but that’s what they claim.
Bakk’s provision doesn’t limit the total Red Plan spending to $125 million. It only limits the Lease levy borrowing to $125 million instead of the planned $171 million.
All the other spending on the Red Plan will be permitted to proceed. So, of the $293 million total cost only $44 million will be lopped off by Bakk’s legislation.
I’m not happy that the original portion requiring a referendum has been excised from Mike Jaros’ bill but there’s not much I can do about that now. I’ll take what ever crumbs I can get out of this.
This will save local taxpayers $44 million dollars and possibly force a reasonable School Board to reimagine a compromise….Oh, did I just say “reasonable?” Silly me.
This Board will just keep marching over the cliff even though this absolutely blows up their phoney rationale for the complete Red Plan saving us all sorts of money.
Instead of getting a third of $293 million JCI will only get a third of $249 million. Thank goodness for that. Its embarassing how little it takes to please me.
