NOTE – THIS IS ANOTHER POST THAT IS SO LONG I MAY NOT BOTHER EDITING IT BUT I MIGHT CHECK IT LATER TO CORRECT MISTAKES.
Seven weeks after LDV learned it had to raise $100,000 which it would have to forfeit to the School District if our court case was to proceed and we lost our suit hindsight is twenty-twenty. Why, we should simply have asked Jeno Paulucci or some other rich Duluthian to hand it over to us. Surely, despite the blizzard of pro Red Plan articles in the DNT he or some other millionaire would have seen the justice in our cause.
In forty years in Duluth I’ve been associated with half a dozen good causes where someone mentioned Jeno as a go to guy for donations. I’ll bet every Duluthian who has been associated with a worthy cause remembers someone making the same suggestion. For Jeno, and the other well-known millionaires, they can probably identify with that scene in Jesus Christ Superstar when hundreds if not thousands of arms reach out to him for instant relief. I explained to our hard-core group that if someone wanted to reach out to Jeno that was fine with me but I wouldn’t do it. Besides, in my estimation, if our cause was so just it was the people who stood to reclaim their rights or prevent the squandering of precious resources on a foolish plan should be the one to raise the money themselves. If Duluth didn’t care it was hard to work up much sympathy for them.
As the best identified leader of LDV it was my hard luck that over the thirty-day fundraising period I had two week long trips planned with my family or my wife and friends. I’ve been incredibly selfish for two years now running off to LDV meetings at the drop of a hat, spending hours on line or on the phone, meals interrupted, weekends interrupted. I was determined to keep my continuing LDV work as invisible from my family and wife as possible during these two inconveniently scheduled trips. Of course, it wasn’t all that invisible since both vacations had me taking and making calls in the car and sleeping four hours a night so that I could open up the laptop while family slept.
And I did put my own money into a bond that could very well evaporate. First I gave ten thousand dollars to LDV for the bond then I gave the sixth District Court another ten thousand dollars. On top of the $12,000 (my guess) I’d already spent over the past two years on LDV work. That adds up to at least $32,000. In eight years on the School board I earned $6,500 a year for my service. Multiply that by eight years and I could end up losing three fifths of everything I ever earned serving the public in the first place.
Two years ago, I would never have imagined spending or putting that kind of money at risk. Two years’ worth of letting hundreds maybe thousands of other people’s hopes rest on your shoulders can do that to a person. Even so, my risks seem puny compared to any of the risks faced by millions young Americans thrown into battle.
Although I’ve covered one fifth of the overall bond another $80,000 of it was covered by hundreds, maybe thousands, of other people. Many want to know why their money wasn’t good enough and we had to give it to a bond company so that the bond company could hand the court a bond saying that they, not the donors, would give the money to the District the same money if the taxpayers lost the suit.
If I had a nickel for every time one of my allies asked me this or another of a dozen perplexing questions I could have paid the rest of the bond myself. My reply to them for these perplexing questions has been the most unsatisfactory question a teacher like me can provide. “Because we have to.”
At lease five LDV people called to ask what it would take to get a “surety” bond. Bonds are simply guarantees of payment of money. Contractors have to have them to repay their customers if some disaster occurs during construction. Municipalities have to have them to guarantee contractors that they will pay them for construction work and these bonds obligate taxpayers to make good on the projects. (This has been a major piece of the Red Plan funding) Accused lawbreakers have to have them to stay out of jail until they appear in court. They have to put their car titles and or the homes of sympathetic family members up as collateral to keep their freedom.
When the five of us began researching bonds we thought we would only have to put ten percent down. Bond companies explained to us that since we could lose 100% of the bond we’d either have to put some one person’s home up as collateral to pay the bond. Under those circumstances, it seemed necessary to raise all $100,000.
No one we found in Duluth handled those kinds of bonds. I had taken a $300,000 bond out earlier in the year when I became my Mother’s conservator. When I called them they made it pretty clear that having all $100,000 would be a good idea because they wouldn’t take the risk that we would lose our case. I learned that at the beginning of the fundraising project and didn’t call them again. As it turns out that could have been a mistake because their offices were in the Twin Cities an easy three-hour drive on the Interstate.
Local business in Duluth directed several of us to the Goldleaf Bond Brokering offices in Montevideo, Minnesota a hundred miles farther away along a lot of two-lane highways. We were given six business days to raise the money. The first day was lost. I picked up a $100,000 cashier’s check from the Sixth District Court (evidently our miscellaneous cashier’s checks all cleared) on the first of the six business days last Wednesday. I took it to Mr. Dean Davidson who was one of five names on the check who would have to endorse it. As I handed the check to him I noticed that the Sixth District Court had typed his name DAVID Davidson. I was advised that the check was worthless. On Thursday, the second business day I was tied up going through my computer sorting through ten thousand old emails and having to figure out how to put them on a computer disc to give to the attorneys representing the School District.
Providing “discovery” to the District had consumed most of the previous week and my deadline for working it out was Friday when I was to meet with the taxpayer’s attorney Craig Hunter and dot all my i’s and cross all my t’s. Oh and the check we had on Wed that had to be rewritten on Thursday would have to be endorsed.
About three LDV members and the taxpayer’s attorney Mr. Hunter were talking to the Montevideo bond brokers to find out how to get a bond from them. Give them our $100,000 and get back from them a guarantee to pay the court $100,000. Easy, right? You silly.
They had three or four documents that all had to be signed by the five taxpayers two of which had to be notarized. The taxpayer’s day jobs are all in different locations. I finally took over the reins of getting the bond information figured out from an email they sent us at 1:30 on Friday after finishing up with Mr. Hunter. Just get a check endorsed five times, right? Oh, and we had to get a $3,000 check signed too. That was the check for Goldleaf, for its work in arranging the bond from a big bond house in California. California set the rules. The $3,000 check was drawn from LDV and required two signatures. I set off for the four other signatures I would need on the $100,000 check and another LDV member set off to collect the two signatures on the $3,000 check. Both checks would have to be overnighted to the Bond Company Friday night for them to be able to overnight a check back to us the following week. As I headed out to get my signatures I was given the email with the instructions on what else the bond company would require – all those documents that would require the same five signatures and notarizations. Those documents also required a lot of personal information from the five plaintiffs. I collected the first signature. I hadn’t grasped that as I headed out in a rush to beat the clock. I hadn’t even read the documents. My signers were all over Duluth. I raced to get the first signature all the while using my cell phone to line up the next three signatures. After getting it I took a little closer look at the documents. One asked for a bank account number from the signer. I went in to ask for it and got a flat “no.” I wasn’t sure it was needed (after all we had $100,000 and no one’s bank would have to be tapped for more money) and the signer was not someone I knew that well so I said “never mind” and went on for the other three signatures.
After getting the second signature (the third counting my own) I stopped to look at the instructions. I had not talked to the bond brokers up to that time. I made my first call to Montevideo. It turned out the broker I would work with over the next five days did most of her communications by email. It also turned out that the private information I thought would only be needed of me including social security number was being demanded from all five plaintiffs. When I learned this I had only about 45 minutes to collect them all and put the documents in the overnight mail. We did have the cashier’s check from the District Court signed and that was ready to be overnighted but all the accompanying documents were not signed and filled out correctly or notarized another wrinkle I hadn’t counted on. I made the decision to hang onto the check and start the process on Monday after a weekend of carefully reading all the documents. That meant that I would have to get all documents filled out correctly, collect information some would object to. One of the signers would also be traveling to Chicago on Monday and unavailable for signing documents and in any case, had declared that he would not provide his social security number. Another of us would not provide anything. Three of us were willing to hand over everything the bond broker demanded including scrapings from our cheeks for DNA testing.
The US Post Office does guarantee overnight delivery but it also offers a money back guarantee when the overnight doesn’t come true. It seemed very likely that when Tuesday rolled around we simply would not have the documentation that would be required by the bond company even though they would have our $100,000. By Tuesday only four of the necessary signers were even in Duluth.
When I showed up to the Monday night meeting of Let Duluth Vote some people were thinking I’d driven down to Montevideo and was just returning because I’d been a little cryptic in my blog postings and email to the group. To say there was consternation when I explained what would be needed and how it might not be able to collect the information. Wonderful people who had poured their hearts out to help raise $100,000 and who had put two years into getting our day in court were beside themselves with questions I could not answer. By the end of the evening I had assurances that all the information we needed would be collected. It would be. That information would become available on Tuesday. We would have to have the bond delivered to the Court on Thursday. If I could get all the information the bond broker required overnighted by Tuesday and it was received on Wednesday and then a bond was overnighted on Wednesday, then – if the Postal Service guarantees could be trusted – the bond would be as good as delivered.
“It’s in the Mail,” has been the promise in many a failed business deal. I would have to travel to Montevideo to get the job done once I was sure that all the documents and notarizations were taken care of. Tuesday dawned and I learned that no one would hold out on the Brokers. I sent instructions and faxed documents to a Chicago Hotel where our plaintiff tourist would receive them. Find a notary, sign them and overnight them back to Montevideo not Duluth. It didn’t happen. It would be Wednesday before the documents could be sent to Montevideo. Would the Brokers get it? They would end up being FedExed because the Chicago PO wouldn’t guarantee overnight delivery. They wouldn’t be received until Thursday the day the bond had to be delivered.
Meanwhile in Duluth on Tuesday I was racing to get all the documents overnighted to Montevideo in the late afternoon. I chewed my fingernails waiting for new documents to be emailed to me. When an hour and a half went by I checked my email to see what was hanging it up. My Outlook Express kindly rings when new email comes through and nothing had come through. But I use Charter cable service. My email goes through a charter email system first and gets forwarded to my hard drive. When I opened my Charter email service I found the critical documents. They had been waiting for me for an hour and a half. I looked at the time. It was not about 3. I would have to travel all over Duluth once again to get the documents signed by the four of us in Duluth. I had to arrange for them to meet me at banks with notaries. The instructions on where to sign the documents were hard to follow because the bond documents were full of antique language and the lines for signatures were a little like those infamous Florida election ballots in the 2004 Florida elections.
I was directed to fax the signatures to Montevideo so they could make sure we’d done them right before overnighting the actual documents and the checks which I had in my grubby little hands. It was 4:15 by the time the notarizations were complete. The West Duluth PO would be open until 5PM. I had the bank fax the signed docs. The faxes didn’t go through. We did it again with the clock ticking down. After the second attempt I simply grabbed the docs and took one of the singers with me back to my house in East Duluth because I discovered in my haste that I’d left another document he had to sign still in my printer’s in basket. At 4:45 he signed it and I hopped in my car to head through the construction of I-35 to get to the Post Office. (Oh, and I didn’t mention the half hour delay getting to the last bank stuck in the traffic jam in Downtown Duluth because of construction)
At 4:58 the line of other customers at the Post Office finally cleared and the clerk gave me the overnight envelope to stuff my precious documents and checks in. Two minutes later and I would have been toast.
I had no idea if any of the documents were signed incorrectly because the faxes were not received in time in Montevideo. All that would require hearing back from Montevideo on Wednesday. Ditto with the overnighted docs from Chicago.
When Wednesday dawned, I had my Thursday plans set. I would leave Duluth on Thursday morning and make the five-hour drive to Montevideo to pick up the bond and drive it back to Duluth to get it to the Court before it closed whenever that was. A little after 8AM I got the word that one document from Chicago had been signed on the wrong line and that one of our documents had not come through and could not be confirmed as having been signed correctly.
BUT neither of these documents required a notary. If I got the Chicago Document overnighted and brought a correct copy of the document they hadn’t seen, they would give me the bond.
OH yeah, I didn’t mention I was sure the document they hadn’t received in the fax was signed incorrectly. It required, for reasons that weren’t apparent to me, for each plaintiff to sign the document twice. I had gotten home Tuesday night and looked at a blank copy of the document and reread the instructions on how to fill it out and let out a howl of anguish when I recalled having us all sign it only once.
I looked at the clock when I got word that I could collect the bond today. It was 11AM I called all the Duluth plaintiffs and lined them up to sign the document again. The last of the signers worked in West Duluth which meant I’d could sneak out of Duluth from along the Becks Road, a short cut, and zip down to Montevideo five hours away.
I called my wife to explain I’d be home late. Called my LDV crew to tell them the bond was all but in our hands and sped out of town with the Mapquest Directions I’d printed out the day before.
As I drove I tried to recall the contents of some email I’d barely glanced at between the taxpayers attorney and the brokers in Montevideo. Craig had insisted on inserting language that took into account the unusual terms of the court directions we were following. The Mortgage Brokers and the big bond companies they represented couldn’t figure out the reason for the language. I made a couple cell phone calls on my way encouraging everyone to straighten this out before the bond was written. Then I drove. There were three detours and construction delays that weren’t anticipated on the Map quest directions. When I got to Montevideo with twenty minutes to spare I got lost. I cell phoned in and got directed to the Mortgage brokers ten minutes before our broker left for the day.
The bond was handed to me and I looked at the verbiage. Our attorney’s words were nowhere to be seen. I asked about them, was assured the Bond Company attorneys in California had done thousands of these and thanked everyone and drove three blocks away to a McDonalds. I’d grabbed a sandwich in Duluth six hours before and thought maybe I ought to think about the bond and call the attorney while consuming an Ice cream treat. My attorney didn’t answer the phone. I decided I’d better stay in Montevideo overnight to get things straightened out in the morning. I drove the bond back to the brokerage. It was open until five. I talked to the CEO and explained my concerns and handed him back the bond saying I’d come back the next morning. I asked him where I should stay. Moments later the taxpayer’s attorney, Craig Hunter, called. He asked me to check the verbiage on the bond but by this time the brokerage doors had been locked. I told him I’d call him from the brokerage in the morning.
This post tells you about the rest of my day in Montevideo.
Thursday morning my attorney called me four times before 8AM. I didn’t discover this until I was halfway home with the bond because I’d shut my phone off to save the batteries the night before.
At Goldleaf our broker got on a conference call with the attorney. He finally persuaded her that the language which was so arcane the Surety Officials couldn’t make sense of it had to be included. He signed off and then the broker called Atlanta to explain. Atlanta said they had to get the OK from the lawyers in Los Angeles. Los Angeles meant Pacific Time. It was still six AM in LA. I asked the broker for a phone book and began going through the yellow pages looking up air ports. Montevideo’s airport didn’t answer. They weren’t up yet either. If I had to wait another three hours to get an OK there was no way I’d be able to race it along five hours of heavily detoured two-lane and get it back to Duluth.
The Air chartered courier service told me that they’d have a hard time getting drivers to do the work. “Don’t you call them pilots?” I asked. No, their couriers to and from Montevideo would be driving. Before my heart leapt out of my mouth the broker told me that everything had been worked out. The LA lawyer had gone to work early. I was out the door at 9:15AM. I couldn’t call anyone until St. Cloud.
The adrenaline I thought for sure would keep me up to St. Cloud began wearing off early. It didn’t help that I’d woken up at 3:30 and answered email and blogged ever since. St. Cloud had been a disaster of construction delay and repair. I kept my eyes out for a Verizon store to buy a cell phone charger I could plug into my car. I saw a Starbucks and had a brainstorm. If anyone knew where a Verizon Store was it would be some punk in Starbucks. I ordered a sandwich, black coffee and sure enough the manager told me how to get to a Verizon. I slurped a sip or two as I hopped back onto Highway 23. I saw the store up ahead and bought a charger. I asked the clerk for a short cut past the construction and took his directions along as my cell phone got powered up again. I gassed up before leaving town and after twenty minutes checked to see if I had any messages. There were seven of them but the battery died before I could hear them all. Over the next two hours I powered it up and returned calls according to whatever seemed the top priority. That continued right up to Duluth where I had one TV crew waiting to talk to me at the court house.
I stopped at our attorneys office with the bond which the legal assistant had to copy for defense counsel. I then met her at the County Court House where to my surprise the WDIO crew was stationed along with School Board Laura Condon. I was mystified by this. Under the circumstances my never super cordial relations with Laura I just said hello and left it at that as we all took an elevator upstairs where I would hand over our bond to the Court Administrator. I did so after he shooed the camera man away.
After my interview I asked what the deal was with Laura Condon. After assuring that I would not spill the beans on my blog I learned that Laura was late with her property taxes. I was told Laura suspected that this information had been leaked for political purposes most likely by my confederates. I expressed surprise at this and explained that because of my central role in LDV I would probably have heard such a thing if any of us had known about it.
In fact, after Tony Cuneo’s experience it was pretty foolish of Laura not to bend over backward to get the issue squared away before her decision to run for reelection. I certainly have gotten pretty adept lately at bending over backwards myself. It’s unavoidable when one takes on two opponents with hundreds of millions and billions of dollars at their disposal to crush out debris at their feet like me and the taxpayers of Duluth. On the other hand, when I saw the explanation on the news I realized that however bad Ms. Condon’s oversight was, it was pretty small potatoes. Still, in the hard core world of politics I also thought to myself, score one for LDV.
