Last night’s school board meeting was the first I’ve attended in years that seemed like a real school board meeting with real adults who knew that what they were doing was serious and that the public was mad and paying attention.
Board members have gotten used to brief meetings rubber stamping everything with little to say other than praise for Superintendent Dixon. Several of them heaoed contempt on Gary Glass for delaying their adjournment by asking questions. They turned the old saw on its head changing it to: “there’s only dumb questions.”
At least two of the Board members managed to get through the entire four hour meeting saying nothing, Ann Wasson and Judy Seliga Punyko. For Ann it was as though she was had to face angry people who she recognized as her social equals. Judy must have had cheek cramps by the end of the meeting because she kept an unwavering tight cheery smile on her face for four full hours.
The speakers were mostly new faces and mostly the people affected by the Ordean development who had finally started to take notice of the implications of the tiny Ordean site with the latest “schematics.” About thirty people spoke at the beginning of the meeting their three minutes often stretching long so that when “public comment” was finished almost two hours later Chair Nilsen adjourned the meeting for a break.
Few of them left for the next two hours as the Board went through the agenda at a more leisurely pace than I’ve seen because there was actual serious discussion of it. Perhaps they weren’t eager to get to what had become the main issue of the night a vote to proceed with more eminent domain acquisitions by handing over the decision to pursue them to the Administration so that they wouldn’t have to cast a vote on throwing anybody out of their home.
When Gary asked questions, and he asked many, they did not roll their eyes and snipe at him. They actually engaged is some serious discussion. For her part Nancy chaired the meeting looking a bit like guard in a woman’s prison (Tat might have been because of her new short cropped hair style) but there was none of her previous faux solicitous correcting of Gary for his ignorance.
When the resolution finally came up for a vote Gary asked a great many questions about various implications of it which prompted a very serious discussion. In this way Gary was able to make it clear what was happening so the homeowners in the audience could see for themselves what they were up against. A few stray challenges were hurled at the Board by audience members who were unhappy with the insinuations some Board members made about the whole process. I took copious notes that I’ll probably never reread all over my agenda.
When Gary pointed out that the addresses to be acquired had been removed from the resolution he suggested that the resolution was so changed that he moved to table the motion. The rest of the Board sat in stunned disbelief that someone was using Parliamentary procedure that for a great many minutes they didn’t know what to do. When no one seconded the motion permitting a discussion the Audience began to cat call.
Of course, it was inappropriate but it was a very human thing to do. As a board member I’ve sat through many such meetings. Why I once watched my eventual successor Tom Hustad do the same thing over the East High School Hockey coach the year before he was elected. Chair Nilsen was hard pressed because her remonstrances to the audience fell on furious ears.
Finally Laura Condon seconded the motion to much applause. Gary calmly proceeded to make several points that had the Board tongue tied for ten minutes. Eventually the Superintendent himself sensing that for a change he might not be able to bulldoze his latest attempt to rush the Red Plan shrugged that he saw no reason the Board couldn’t act on the question in January. Gary seemed on the verge of winning until Tim Grover came to the Superintendent’s and the Red Plan’s defense. Tim gave a homily in support of eminent domain and suggested ways to make the resolution more palatable for the voting Board members if just as lethal to the Ordean homeowners.
I realized too late that Tim had changed the subject from the motion to table to a discussion of the eminent domain resolution and that he was giving the Board members a rationale for voting against the tabling motion. I had remained silent through the catcalling and a couple dramatic confrontations that will be the subject of a succeeding post but I had to let new school board member Glass know that his motion had precedence and should be the focus of the discussion. Too late I walked up to tell him this and Nancy Nilsen who had already had her fill of uncooperative audience members said something to me I didn’t catch but which was probably along the lines of – you have invaded our sacred space, villain. She obviously didn’t want anyone giving poor Gary pointers in how he was being out maneuvered.
The Board members rallied with Tim’s help. The vote to table got only Gary’s vote and the audience hurled questions at Laura Condon who had formerly received their applause. She shouted back that she was busy writing things down and just didn’t have time to say “aye” when the voice vote was taken. Typical of Laura not to want to disappoint anyone.
A dozen Ordeaners swarmed the podium and engaged Board members in an intense conversation. There were still about eight of them left talking to Nancy Nilsen when I left twenty minutes later.
I spent the time talking to a gaggle of women Two wives of former school board members well into their AARP years and a very polite church woman who has been following the Board’s increasingly flimsy justifications for Red Plan related questions several months. All three had behaved badly through the meeting and I congratulated them. One, Charlotte Boyd who is adamant that she will not cart her ailing husband out of their home had gone to the podium before me to shame Tim Grover who at first wouldn’t look at her. Tim had told me last year he’d spent a lovely hour at the Boyd home enjoying the verdant surroundings. Tim and I, once close friends, haven’t spoken in six months. Many in Let Duluth Vote consider him a traitor and I heard that word used specifically for the first time last night.
He certainly out maneuvered Gary and he gave a fairly cogent and brave defense of the “pure” public purpose of eminent domain to an unappreciative audience of E D targets.
Kerry Leider who has been the designated spokesman and supervisor for the District of the Red Plan is also a friend. He once gave me credit for saving his job when Laura Condon and others wanted to give him the boot. This was the harshest audience he has had to face and I don’t think things will be any easier for him through the rest of the Red Plan era. He looked at me at the meeting a little sheepishly and said, “What can I say?” “What can I say” I echoed. Then I told him that I only looked at him as the “messenger” and that I was not the King of Persia. (Kings were famous for putting messengers of bad news to death in olden times)
Kerry said he had gotten the impression that I had made that position clear to some of my allies and I took that as something of a thank you.
School Board watchers often used to say, during the even rowdier times I served on the School Board, that “it was the best show in town.” Tonight it was. Too bad the the District now makes it so hard for anyone to watch their recorded meetings. I guess I don’t blame them considering their new motto. Ignorance is bliss.
