One of the many faux arguments thrown around by the Red Plan’s supporters about having a referendum is that it would have been a waste of time and money. A special election might have cost ten or twenty thousand dollars and prevented the District from immediately charging ahead with their construction. Then Board Chair Nancy Nilsen’s claimed hysterically that every day’s delay would cost The District $50,000. Big Whup!
The Board has got its third year of programming cuts going and says it faces a $4.5 million shortfall again this year (that didn’t stop them from borrowing $5 million in classroom money to spend on the Red Plan) so it authorized $250,000 to fight Let Duluth Vote in Court and, oh yes, to help prepare a Plan A, B, C, or D to submit to the State Dept. of Education.
For two years the Red Plan’s supporters have been pleased to call its opponents a “small vocal minority.” That has always been doubtful but it could have been tested with a referendum from the start. Had the Board done so they would have avoided the two-year long slog that has mired the Red Plan and the School Board in acrimony and no one would be taking the District to court today.
For the first time in a year of online “polling” by the Trib story the results show a fairly even level of support for both sides in the Red Plan dispute. Just how many people participated is unknown because current polls no longer show the number of voters. If one side or another got a lot of people to vote or if hardly anybody bothered to vote its impossible to tell. It appears to me that a single determined person may even have the ability to vote over and over easily skewing the results.
So, for what its worth, here is the result as of this morning of the latest Trib poll.
Poll
Is Let Duluth Vote helping or hindering the school district’s future?Results …Helping 51.4% …Hindering 48.6%
