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*********************************
