A year ago Ann Redelfs who lives a few blocks away tried to enlist my help to save the trees along fourth Street from the bulldozer. She helped start a campaign to protect them from next year’s massive street and sewer repair. I offered her some advice but not much else as I was sucked into the School Board’s self immolation.
Ann persevered quite handily, if not successfully, without me and figured out how to get public data from the City something Art Johnston has largely been unable to get from the Duluth School District despite serving on the Board. She has turned that experience into the second such lesson on the data access laws. She will be teaching what she has learned since attending a similar session last spring, once again at the public library.
John Ramos who has been exposing the follies of the new library project in the Reader spoke glowingly of the seminar to me. The first session was led by data access guru Rich Neumeister who was impressed that Duluth had a large attendance last year of sixty folks. No doubt the Red Plan has helped infuse in local citizens the sense that government is often too secretive in its dealings. The Freedom of Information act and Minnesota Government Data Practices Act are meant to be an antidote to that willful lack of transparency.
