This post is too important for me to leave unedited but I’ve got other tasks pressing on me. I will attempt to clean this up soon.
I attended my first Let Duluth Vote meeting in almost a year last night. What a tough crew to hang in there so long. Every one seemed glad to see me save one person who sat sphinx like through the meeting. One person asked me how many Let Duluth Vote T shirts I had because the one I changed into looked so clean. The answer is quite a few of them although most of them which are bagged and stored in my attic are not in my size. I simply haven’t worn the two in my size out. I’ve taken to wearing the many Abe Lincoln T’s I have instead. In fact after a couple hours working on lawnsigns in the hot sun I had to slip out of an Abe and clean up a bit. The new shirt seemed appropriate.
As mentioned before the public is resigned to if not reconciled with the Red Plan. I was glad to be amidst some fighters again and heard numerous stories about the resentment they see and hear from their fellow citizens. If ever there was a city where the “you can’t fight City Hall” mindset has taken over it is Duluth.
There were some anecdotes about Tim “turn off the mike” Grover. Apparently he and his wife no longer eat at some local restaurants because they are accosted by angry folks. I drove by the now leveled Piedmont school being rebuilt on another slightly larger postage stamp property last Monday when I went to my dental appointment. With the school demolished the District is still operating with a horse behind the cart while negotiation to get more property. Like every other aspect of the Red Plan the idea is to get the District half done in so that one way or another it will have to be finished off even if the old majority on the Board bites the dust.
And that can’t happen too soon. Banker and former board member Rich Paulson who has, like others, seen so much stupidity that he can’t quite let go told a story from June of 2009 that took my breath away. When the School Board met last June a teacher’s contract was about to be voted on by the Board. Whatever the Board did this contract would be the template for all other union contracts. The pay increase for the teachers was only 1 per cent. However huge increases in the medical plan were almost completely unnoted. The DNT which opined ad nauseum about the City’s health crises wrote not a word about the District’s increased health costs that I recall but the District’s contract was an unconscionable ten percent increase during a time of economic crises and uncertainty. When you hear Dr. Dixon complain that it was the State that let Duluth down remember that this is a lie and that all the teachers we laid off were a result of his decision to buy labor peace so he could finish the Red Plan.
But this isn’t the story that I was going to tell. At that meeting as Rich relates Gary Glass, then still a minority of one, asked what the cost of the overall contract was going to be before voting on it……..
NOW TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND SIT DOWN
Mr. Paulson reported that the Human Resources Director, Tim Sworsky, told Gary that he would not tell the Board what the new contract would cost until they voted to adopt it!
UNTIL THEY VOTED TO ADOPT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
These are the folks Roger “I never supported the Red Plan” Reinert supported when he put his name on the ad urging voters to reelect (in Mike Jaros’ words)” Dixon’s Chicks” to the School Board.
If Tim Grover is getting the finger and having people accost him at restaurants its hard for me to feel any sympathy for him. Afterall, he is the Chair of the Board and one of the few school board members who knows a thing or two about how boards ought to be run. He presided over a meeting where one of Dr. Dixon’s lackeys told his fellow Board members he would not tell them the fiscal consequences of the single biggest contract for employees that they were about to vote on. This is not the Tim Grover I once knew who quibbled about pennies on the business report and who once put the knife to me to promise not to vote for any possible tax increases.
So, the Trib recently noted Dixon’s announcement that there would be a slight decrease in school taxes this year……..OH GLORY HALLELUJAH!
Its all a sham and sleight of hand to postpone the day of reckoning.
A tidal wave operates with the same physical laws as the lapping waves one walks through on a beach a succession of wave retreats and then the onrushing waters of the waves that dogs and children love to splash in. The only difference is that a tsunami is a much, much bigger wave. Before a tidal wave hits there is a sudden and for onlookers unreal retreat of the sea. Untold millions of people over the year who have seen these wave retreats have wonderingly wandered out into the absent sea to cast their eyes on the uncovered shore only to look up and see a mountainous onrushing wave that they have cluelessly walked towards.
At the next school board meeting the Administration will ask the Board members to borrow another five or six million dollars. The Board members in the majority will passively adopt the recommendation and ad it to tens of million of additional borrowing that they will force us to pay interest on so that they can defer the pain of paying for this borrowing until the District is completely done in in 2113 after the Red Plan is finished and Dr. Dixon makes his getaway from the School System he brought to glorious ruin.
Oh, and how much has the overall contract (with the 1% salary increase) been costing our struggling District? According to Rich all of the contracts are running about 10% more than previous contracts with all the health care costs. No wonder the District’s teachers look like the survivors on Gericault’s Wreck of the Hephaestus.
