Ralph Doty should stick to stories about old timey radio when he writes for the Budgeteer. Today, he treads yet again into territory that is foreign to him – rational Red Plan analysis.
He keeps it brief and sticks to Dr. Dixon’s chief talking point:
Would someone please explain to me why a Duluthian would not support the school district’s Red Plan, and instead support “Plan B,” which was designed by a few leaders of Let Duluth Vote. After all, Plan B would financially impact my property tax bill about the same as the Red Plan.
Ralph’s cluelessness is as evident as the missing question mark at the end of his question.
Two quick points among a great many available to rebut Ralph’s insinuation:
1. The assertion that many people had a hand in developing the Red Plan is a fraud.
2. Plan B (as distorted as the District’s stalling and interference has caused it to be) would be one third to one half less expensive.
I’ll use a personal example to demonstrate the value of repair and refurbishing vs. the contemporary mania for building McMansions.
My home is a decade short of a century old. (This makes it twice the age of most of the school buildings being torn down by Johnson Controls.) A little over a year ago Duluth suffered a major fall rain storm. Unknown to me our home’s lateral sewer pipes were almost completely blocked by roots. As rain water flooded into them I awoke to an alarming call from my son shouting up to our bedroom that the basement was full of water.
After spending frantic hours pulling furniture out of the way of the rising sewage I crawled back to bed hoping for the best. The next day I lugged stinking carpeting and contaminated debris out of the basement.
If I’d been on top of my home maintenance I’d have cleared out the roots and spared myself a lot of hassle. A little later the City announced it would be ordering homeowners in our neighborhood to install new lateral sewer pipes. It seemed like a good time to bite the bullet and fix up our basement.
We removed 50-year old cedar paneling, asbestos laden linoleum and finally installed a second shower – something that would have been nice when we moved in a quarter century earlier with two small children. The basement itself is now an entertainment center. After years of neglect we have actually spent a lot of time there since fixing it up. We added additional electrical supply which powers our new sump pump and new heating and ventilation. The cost was tens of thousands of dollars. With our new lateral sewer lines there should be no need for major reconstruction in the basement for another twenty years – maybe fifty.
If JCI had been advising us we would have torn the house down and built it from scratch. That would have added another zero to the costs of improvement at a time when we are facing retirement. That’s what Dr. Doty advocates. Worse yet, he would force me to go into debt to do this just as the Duluth School Board is now requiring Duluth taxpayers to go into debt for the Red Plan. This is the power Dr. Doty advocates voters surrender to their elected officials – the power to let them take us into debt for our own good. It will be worth it because our children will get a great education and then they can use it to pay off the debt we’ve saddled them with.
I guess its easy for Dr. Doty to advocate this. He’s been overheard bragging that he’s enjoying four separate pension plans at least two of which are government financed. Now that’s what I call a public servant.
