Replying to an email

Dear A****************************,

You might send my Blog’s URL to your friends and neighbors. www.lincolndemocrat.com.

The St. Louis County School District is also fighting JCI. Check the Timberjay Newspaper for many articles shining a light on JCI’s slick moves. I’ve linked to dozens of them on my blog. In fact they republished a story about Paynesville which I also linked to.

Our City government fought JCI when the company misrepresented (lied) about how much the City could save on a power generator. The company has agreed to two million of give back to the City.

You might also suggest that people accessing my site do a “search” on JCI. They will get lots of blog posts where I criticisize JCI.

This company has learned that small governmental units have lots of gullible rubes including especially school board members.

I am a middle of the roader. After a thirty-five year run as a moderate Republican I began caucusing with Democrats after ten years of being called a RINO. Dixiecrats and dittoheads took over my party.

JCI has learned that giving people a chance to vote is a real obstacle to stealing them blind. Feel free to quote that.

Harry

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 2:58 PM, a*************************@aol.com wrote:

Mr. Welty –

I came across your name and your blog while “researching” (that’s the lazy man’s euphimism for googling) Johnson Controls projects in Minnesota. After hearing a bit about their project in St. Louis County, I stumbled across their work in your neck of the woods.

Let me be upfront: my aim in this e-mail is to see if you have any ability and willingness to help me fight off this corporate monster. I live in Paynesville and we’ve been targeted by JCI for a $16M “health and safety” improvement project. By “we’ve,” I mean our Superintendent and school board and by “targeted” I mean made-suckers-of.

You and I might be on opposite sides of the voting ballot, (though from some brief reading through your blog I suspect that you’re quite middle-of-the-line) but I’ve never been one to fear reaching out a hand.

I’m not sure how many of the details of our situation you know (or care to know), but the public outcry is boiling up around a project that had, five years ago, been allotted $100k to accomplish. As you know (and as JCI certainly takes advantage of), health and safety levys do not require public vote. So now we are supposedly stuck with a $16 million bill for a small school district with perpetually declining enrollment in a town of less than 3,000 people.

Any advice? Any words of wisdom in approaching this diplomatically? There is a very real need for heat/ventilation updates, but I’m becoming afraid that it might now be too late…
We’re having our next community meeting on Tuesday and I’d love to offer people some words encouragement.

I appreciate your time.
Thank you

-A*********************************

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