Red plan angst spreads into business community

By RON BROCHU

A Duluth real estate broker rang her hands last week when discussing the housing market. Bad enough that home sales have slowed to a trickle, but the school district’s Red Plan has many potential buyers wondering if they want their kids in Duluth public schools at all.

“Everyone is checking out private and parochial schools,” because they don’t like what ISD 709 proposes to offer," the broker said. People don’t want their kids bused across town, and they don’t want them bouncing between different schools each time Superintendent Keith Dixon tries to expedite Red Plan implementation. Those factors have made it more difficult to market homes in neighborhoods that traditionally had nearby schools.

“The board knows they have to push the plan forward now, because they’ll all be voted out of office at election time. People are livid!” the broker lamented.

Quite possibly, a court decision also could force district officials to rethink their strategy, which in essence has been to sidestep their own bidding rules and derail public input, opponents say. In a civil court action, Harry Welty, Laurence Burda, Dean Davidson, Robert Sershon and Art Johnston are challenging the school district’s right to give Johnson Controls Inc. a no-bid contract to provide professional services to implement the construction. Case law suggests such arrangements are illegal, Welty said.

According to a Dec. 14, 2006, letter from Johnson Controls to school district property and risk manager Kerry Leider, Johnson will receive 18.8 percent of construction costs as a management fee.

This is the plan Budgeteer columnist Ralph Doty on Sunday deemed “visionary.” In his column, he argued it will stimulate Duluth’s economy by creating construction jobs, even suggesting opponents would stall local economic progress while in the depths of an economic abyss – as if the Red Plan wasn’t divisive enough without adding fear-mongering to the equation. Fortunately, most people understand an alternative plan also would stimulate the construction industry.

In the same column, Doty also suggested Duluthians support the Red Plan three-to-one. If that were true, of course, board members wouldn’t fear submitting the $400+ million project to referendum, as the school district’s own hand-picked citizens’ panel recommended. But Dixon refused, alienating even staunch supporters. He knows the Red Plan doesn’t offer what people want at a price they can afford.

It promotes just the opposite, in fact. Under former Superintendent Julio Almanza, the school district hosted a weekend-long session to solicit community input. Smaller schools topped the priority list.

Today’s plan, however, is to build larger buildings and transport more kids than ever at a time when fuel costs are destined to climb. Moving forward, a growing share of taxpayer dollars will go toward busing instead of teaching.

There are numerous other flaws:

• The biggest mistake is dumping the Central High School-Secondary Technical Center complex and its surrounding fields. The site has space for parking, for athletics, and it’s centrally located. Best of all, it’s isolated from homes. Constant traffic and student frolicking pose no problem.

• Conversely, the miniature footprint at Ordean, the district’s next high school site, promises to disappoint. If developed as proposed, neighbors will display the same angst as those who formerly resided across West Fourth Street from Denfeld. For decades, they screamed about students disrespecting their property, which was sandwiched between the school and a Grand Avenue fast food joint. For years, wimpy Denfeld administrators refused to acknowledge the problem, much less address it.

• Stuffing 1,100 kids into each of two proposed middle schools creates an unruly situation when kids are at a volatile age. Parents whose children have attended Woodland, for example, heard constant talk about fights at the school, which for years has been packed like a can of sardines.

The fatal flaw, however, is the district’s relationship with Johnson Controls, opponents argue. Like many consultant deals, it encourages the contractor to find “problems,” real or imagined, Welty said.
Despite legal and other concerns, Dixon and school board supporters are digging in their heels, refusing to acknowledge the growing heap of concerns.

Lawsuit plaintiffs have called for an expedited trial schedule, arguing “…between now and the time of trial, untold amounts of taxpayer money may be spent on an unlawful contract.”

Author Ron Brochu archives his stories at www.ronbrochublog.com.

Story was originally published in the March 28 Northland Reader.