I’ve not given myself the time to do much blogging. Its not because there hasn’t been anything Red Plan or otherwise to comment about. Its just that I’m trying to catch up on two years worth of deferred work. And life keeps me busy. Last week I got a new grandson. The Tan Man has a little brother. Its been fun and exhausting and cost me a couple warm, sticky-snow days that I would otherwise have used to build my annual snow sculpture.
But what little I have written has not been overlooked. I got an email this morning.
—– Original Message —–
From: bob _______
To: Harry Welty
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 11:46 PM
Subject: HmmmYou continue to sound like a sore loser with your blog posts. Perhaps that was part of the problem in the election. You were so desperate, mean and full of personal attacks that people could not take you seriously. I heard more than a few people cite a few of the aforementioned complaints.
Bob and I fenced a bit through email during the campaign. Unlike many of my critics at least Bob was willing to listen and we carried on a reasonable debate. This was my reply to Bob.
Bob,
I’m sure that you are correct. Some of my own allies cut me off apparently embarrassed to be associated with me. I took the bad cop side of a good-cop, bad-cop campaign. Since I wasn’t a candidate I could say the unpleasant things that needed to be said and let the candidates I supported take the higher road.
Honestly, I am not certain that I’ve been right about everything I’ve suggested or predicted about the consequences of the Red Plan. The Red Plan is close to being fulfilled and time will tell. If our schools are eventually the better for it (and by schools I mean the students, and their education) then the Red Planners will have the last laugh and I’ll have egg on my face. Frankly, I hope that I’ve been wrong because our children’s future is vastly more important than my reputation.
Even so, I’ve always had the advantage of being on the high road on the most important question – whether we should have had the right to vote on this project. I strongly suspect the fierce criticism I leveled put a lot of pressure on JCI to contain costs rather than take for granted their ability to milk this project for all it was worth. Even now there are two more skeptics on the school board who will be quick to cry out if they hear of any such mischief.
The new schools may become (most almost certainly will become) edifices for which Duluthians can take great pride. However, for this generation they will always suffer the taint of something forced down our throats because we didn’t get to vote for them.
I hope for Duluth’s sake that I’ve been mostly wrong. However, because the District was so duplicitous and because so many of its leaders resorted to dissembling and lies to sell their plan I will never regret anything I did and very few things I wrote.
I’m quite aware that at this point anything I write will sound like sour grapes. The only thing that will shut me up is proof that the Red Plan has not harmed our schools. If that happens, and it will be many years before that is evident, I’ll shut up. By that time, however, I’ll have written my book. If nothing else it will tell future generations of school administrators how not to implement a school building project.
Harry
