A couple posts on the Trib’s online comment section show that six weeks of bashing Red Plan critics have given the School Board a little more courage. Nancy Nilsen rewrites history in replying to a critic. I’ve recorded Nancy’s confident and incorrect assertions that there will be no new Red Plan taxes at least twice. Here’s the one referenced by Nancy and here’s a second example.
Nancy N. Duluth, MN 08/06/2009 4:31 PM
Karen – When speaking about the finances and tax implications of the plan at the school board meeting you are referring to, I meant to say we were done levying for the entire amount, but mistakenly said bonding. When corrected by the administration, I commented that he was correct and that is what I meant to say. Somehow you must have missed that part of the comments. I fully understand the difference between bonding and levying and was not hiding behind JCI. I have a Master’s Degree in Business Administration and have been fully involved in the financial aspects of this plan. Actually there will be two more bonds being let, but the bottom line is that has already been figured into the taxes we have been paying over the past two years. Once those bonds have been sold, we will pay back the general fund money that has been borrowed – including interest. The general fund money that was borrowed was not designated for use in the classroom. It would have been invested somewhere else earning interest, so it just made sense to borrow it from ourselves. This happens all the time in the business world and in individual finances. There is nothing out of the ordinary happening here. This is not a scheme. It is just plain financial planning. – Nancy Nilsen
Karen H. Duluth, MN 08/06/2009 12:28 PM
Missing the point, or choosing to because that would be an acknowledgement that some school board members are not as well informed as Julie states. The chair did not know there was and still is another $60 mil to be bonded. That is the point. A district guy had to correct her. And more fuzzy math. They will borrow from the general fund to pay for the Red Plan and then pay it back with interest. Over 70% of the purported savings is from staff. And if that is not realized their whole scheme falls apart.
Nancy’s blithe explanation that “we will pay back the general fund money that has been borrowed – including interest” is wishful thinking. It requires the district to sell property for values that are unlikely to be sustained in this market – savings of staff over the course of twenty years that will require larger class sizes – and energy efficiencies likely to be as fraudulent as the $3 million JCI promised the City of Duluth for work on the Duluth Steam Plant.
