I’ve told many folks that be be in Duluth a “City of the first class” makes one a second class citizen.
In today’s Bygones for the Trib on the cartoon page – how appropriate – I read that forty years ago today the preliminary estimates of the Census Bureau show that by a hair Duluth is expected to keep the necessary 100,000 residents to maintain that special Minnesota urban status. This despite Duluth having lost 6,000 people the previous decade.
1970 will be the last decade that Duluth has this many people but when it drops later to below 100,000 local legislators like Sam Solon will make sure Duluth is grandfathered in to the status as long as it maintains a suitable population. We’ve been hovering in the mid 80,000 range now for thirty years even as the State of Minnesota has added a million people to the population.
Among other things this will provide some of the legal cover for Dr. Dixon to foist the state’s largest single school construction project on Duluth without a referendum. That is apparently only possible because our first class school board members need not encumber themselves with the concerns of the voters they are about to tax to the tune of $430 million dollars.
Oh, when citizens do speak up at school board meetings too personally their microphones will be cut and their letters will be discarded before they ever reach the school board.
Which of these three monkeys does this remind you of?
