What had been planned as a fifteen minute power point presentation by Let Duluth Vote’s Karen Heisick and Art Johnston lasted until a little shy of ten PM. Karen concentrated on the value of smaller schools and discussed the findings of Dr. Joe Nathan. Art’s presentation described the facilities as Let Duluth Vote envisions them for the Review and Comment document.
Both our presenters were greeted, not surprisingly, by a cold silence which must have been pretty unnerving. Art repeatedly encouraged the Board to ask questions. When he was done he got them. Some were the canned questions asked earlier by Move Forward Duluth. It was nonetheless gratifying to have the entire school board paying close enough attention to ask questions.
Behind the Superintendent was the work of the District’s Print shop. They had taken two similar spread sheet versions of possible Plan B building configurations and blown them up into six foot tall billboards. Twenty minutes worth of questions repeatedly suggested that Let Duluth Vote was offering a different plan B than they described to the 3000 plus petition signers. Suddenly the District has a heartfelt desire to do justice and protect the petition signers from Let Duluth Vote.
Of course this is nonsense. The petition language is the only basis for any Review and Comment document. It was only 75 words long. Few petition signers ever even saw the spreadsheets. They just read the names of schools which would be fixed up and the price tag that was a $100 million less than the Red Plan. Let Duluth Vote is being held to a standard that permits no deviation from the spread sheets whereas the Red Plan presented to the public was taken to the state combining elements of the Red, White and Blue plans. As long as the 75 words are honored there is no problem.
Tim Grover and the Superintendent were the primary interrogators always beginning by asserting that they would take two plans to the State but then suggesting that one of the plans the wrong plan and then asking Art to explain which plan was the right plan. Had he said that one or the other was the right plan it would simply have given Red Plan supporters ammunition to discredit Let Duluth Vote.
It was evident that the Superintendent was looking for grounds to ask the State to nix Let Duluth Vote’s preferred plan.
The other significant wrangle and much more significant was Art’s complaint that District had not given basic data to Let Duluth Vote. Kerry Leider the District’s Facilities man and the Superintendent repeatedly rejected this telling Art that he had seen everything there was to see.
Art told the School Board that no self respecting engineer would commence any building project without such elementary data. It remains to be seen if the District is being honest on this point. How ATS&R will complete a review and comment without it is hard to imagine.
