The issue of mulch consumed a third of our four-hour marathon Business Committee meeting yesterday. I had tried to prepare my “eight loyal readers” by posting two text messages from a fellow I greatly admire who has led the charge to have the crumb rubber mulch replaced, Cory Kirsling. Those posts were “I won’t wait three years” Parts Three and Two.
I won’t rehash the whole meeting here but there are two stories in the Trib about it. The Mulch story puts the discussion in perspective. It’s replacement will cost more and take longer than the Board was led to believe surprise, surprise. Luke Sydow, of SAS has been attempting to find contractors who will do the work but none was willing to offer a bid to do it in a single year. That more than anything set the Board’s teeth on edge because its not a decision which will fly with parents. As the story indicates I would prefer to have our parents help us put together a consortium of local contractors using volunteer labor to do the job over the summer.
Mr. Sydow, had read my blog and took exception to some of the comments that had been made by Mr. Kirsling. Although, it took about twenty minutes for me to be recognized to offer it, I did finally get a chance to apologize to Mr. Sydow. But I also apologized to Mr. Kirsling. I had posted Mr. Kirsling’s comments without his permission. Had he spoken on the record he would have been more politic. Mr. Sydow was very gracious under the circumstances and we shook hands and I repeated my apology as he left the meeting. In a moment I will go back and append NOTES OF APOLOGY to the offending post.
During a three minute break afterwards Member Rosie Loeffler-Kemp stopped as she passed me and scolded me about offering more apologies for other inaccuracies in my blog. Then she zipped on and was halfway across the Board room before I could finish saying I would be happy to correct any other mistakes if she would only point them out to me.
PS: I just took a call from a local contractor who asked me incredulously if the School District had never heard of a “vacume truck.” He explained that they have them for the railroads to suck up taconite pellets that fall off the trains. He told me they could suck the mulch out of a couple playgrounds in no time. I told him that Cory Kirsling had been telling us this for several months. The contractor was gobsmacked that we were talking about a million dollar plus deal. He thought we could get all the playgrounds filled with wood chips for a hundred grand but he suggested simple earth would cost almost nothing. I had a short conversation with him about “attenuation” to explain why a dirt surface wouldn’t fly.
