Last night Brenda Anderson of Let Duluth Vote took the Administration to task for what appeared to be delaying its responsibility to draw up a review and comment for our Plan B. Of course, we have ample examples of delay to fuel our suspicions.
Dr. Dixon stood his ground and said it would be the District’s plan and that he had a responsibility to do what the signers of the petition wanted him to do. Since he’s worked so hard to defuse the petition it was unintentionally funny.
In doing this he is holding our petition language to a higher standard than his Red Plan whose “schematics” change regularly – one day no stadium the next day a stadium – one day lots of new parking the next hardly any.
Dr. Dixon is attempting rather obviously to do two things besides delay our review and comment. He wants to draw up a review and comment that is unpalatable and salt it with proof that it would be inferior to the Red Plan. He also wants to deny public data being hidden by Johnson Controls. Our 10 page request for proposals to consultants to help draw up a full fledged plan also outlines the public data we want access to. Dr. Dixon has told Board members that we’ve seen all we are going to see.
He defends this by saying that what he’s already made public is all the Minnesota Dept. of Education required of the District before OK’ing the Red Plan. But in my conversations with the MDE it was made quite clear that the staff wanted to see more information especially relating to transportation and desegregation.
So, the District wants the flexibility to change their plan at will to hold down public opposition while making our plan inflexible to stoke public opposition.
