Do Over Fallout 11 – I write a letter to Bernie re: her complaint – Prologue B

I’ve cooled down…..but I will post my letter to Bernie in the next post. I promise.

I have one aim immediate aim in writing these posts. Make it possible to begin negotiations with Edison starting next week. I am well aware that when you put a gun to some people’s heads they will dare you to pull the trigger. I’m not interested in threatening the four board members who oppose a sale. I do believe they shut down the discussion prematurely to stifle the supporters of the idea before it was fully vetted. I think that tactic backfired. It certainly did with me. The other side made a feeble attempt at transparency but strangling an important community conversation, like a baby in a crib, isn’t truly transparent. As I wrote in my email to the School Board I will be satisfied if I lose on a 3-4 vote but only after a full debate on a level playing field.

I don’t often remove a blog post. I’ve only done it half a dozen times over ten years but I removed one this morning. It made fun of Rosie Loeffler-Kemp who has a habit of annoying the hell out of me. It turned out what I wrote was wrong as well as mean spirited so I took it off. The last post I killed detailed a hideous thing one of Art Johnston’s persecutors did. I removed it at Art’s request. It was too graphic for his taste. Another post I took down made fun of one of the Red Plan’s finance gurus after he filed for bankruptcy. It was a cheap shot. That is not to say hard shots are unfair.

I will add this about Rosie. Rosie and the smartest new member of our School Board, Alanna Oswald, went to the Minnesota School Board Association’s new board member training school last week. Alanna told me that the two of them, with the help of MSBA trainers, had a very productive conversation about what they hoped to accomplish on the School Board. I see in that the emergence of some important good will. That said, I believe Rosie has taken on a role that is destructive of trust. She is referred to in the long letter I wrote to Bernie Burnham. I’m not quite sure what her role was but I suspect Bernie’s “official complaint” would not have been sent to me had Rosie not put the complaint bug in her ear. Or it could have been another employee of the District who is closely related to another member of our school board. That leaves me with a question to pose to my readers, to wit: What is the difference between throwing a knife at someone’s back in a dark alley and throwing a knife at them face to face in the sunshine of a blog for everyone to see? I’m a villain of the latter sort but I’m not sure everyone would agree that my transparency is all that welcome.

On that note let me share an email I received after posting Bernie Burnham’s complaint against me:

I finally read “click bait”…. I guess that explains the enraged roar I heard the other day. I thought it sounded like Art Johnston all the way from the Grand Canyon….

I don’t even know what to say. Have another glass of wine and relax? What else can you do about people who seem intent on turning everything into a political football? (It’s more than a little difficult for me to believe that this isn’t the union getting back at you for trying to resurrect the idea of selling Central.)

I just hate to see you go through it, too, and I hope the rest of the Board doesn’t go down the same path they tried to go down with Art.

I, for one, appreciate your candidness and I wish all our elected officials were as self-reflective and as open with the public about their decision-making process as you are. As a voter, that makes me trust your decisions, even at times when I’m not sure I agree with them or even if I’m pretty sure I disagree with them.

Hang in there!

For the record, this letter was sent to me well before Edison made a pitch for Central.

And one more thing. My hero Abraham Lincoln used to write tough letters to his persecutors too – then he put them in a drawer to think about for a day or two until he cooled off. He often didn’t bother to send them afterward because he knew angry letters would only aggravate his problems. I wish I was always as wise as Honest Abe.

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