One of the great mysteries to me is why, after a year of successfully delaying any consideration of Plan B, the District broke into a sudden sweat to turn in a review and comment proposal on it.
The three possibilities that occurred to me were A. A gun being pointed at their head by the Attorney General……Naw, I don’t think so. B. To persuade the Duluth public that they have always had every intention of playing by the rules…..Naw, I don’t think so. or C. Submit a crappy Plan B Review and Comment document that the Minnesota Dept. of Education would nix thereby winning some sort of vindication for ignoring Plan B for the last year. Now that’s more like it.
But even the Board couldn’t quite swallow a six figure charge for writing a crappy review and comment. So, someone bargained ATS&R down to a palatable seventy grand. Heck, that’s the kind of chump change they’ve been putting into all sorts of publicity scams ever since the Red Plan got under way. What’s another teacher’s salary?
Would ATS&R go for such a sham? Hey, $70,000 is $70,000. I wondered just how much an architect was paid and found this website which suggested that a “level V” architect should make up to $75,000 a year.
I don’t know anything about the site or if this figure was for a beginning architect’s salary or what a level V is. So let just say that ATS&R is getting half an architect’s salary for three weeks of work. So, how many architects will they put into the effort? Six?
On a shorter segment on MPR this afternoon I got a new quote in saying that having this done might be of benefit because we could get some expert help looking at alternatives to the Red Plan. Of course, if our suit is successful there will be a need to look at alternatives. On the other hand where this District is concerned paranoia isn’t such a foolish state of mind.
I did a little googling and found that ATS&R is part of a tight little construction community that includes JCI. This year they all had booth’s in close proximity at the State School Board’s Convention along with Krause Anderson the builders. They were all sponsors of a golf tourney for School Administrators a couple years ago along with the law firm currently representing the District, Kennedy and Graven. In my paranoid state I can imagine JCI calling in a little favor. “Hey, guys. We need to sabotage a bunch of crazies up here in Duluth. Can you give us a hand? They’ve got money to burn.”
It didn’t help that the friendly Mr. Giroux of ATS&R who greeted me like an old friend at Tuesday’s presentation didn’t return my phone call the following day when I left the message that I’d like to have a cup of coffee with him last week when I traveled down to the Twin Cities on family business. In case, he’s reading this now, I’ll be coming down again this week. I’m still open for that cup of coffee. I won’t take too much of your time. Honest. I want you spending it on our Review and Comment. Its costing us a teacher.
