Proctor Schools to send busses into Duluth
May 11th, 2008The Proctor Journal reported that the Proctor schools will be sending busses into the Duluth School District as an experiment this fall to see who wants to attend Procot.
The Proctor Journal reported that the Proctor schools will be sending busses into the Duluth School District as an experiment this fall to see who wants to attend Procot.
I just checked the Trib’s online poll from a couple days ago to see how it turned out. No suprises.
People were asked whether they supported Mike Jaros’ effort to put a limit on the Red Plan and give them a vote. 440 people voted.
Those agreeing with Mike’s bill 64.32 percent - a landslide.
Those opposed 35.45 percent.
For Immediate Release
8:30AM Thursday, May 8, 2008
For further information contact
Harry Welty
Duluth School District Maneuvers to Beat the Jaros Bill
The Duluth School District has called two previously unscheduled meetings to expedite the final borrowing for the Red Plan and beat the clock before the state legislature can enact the Jaros Bill which would require a referendum and public approval to continue with the project.
The first of these meeting is today at 5:15 PM. It will be a Committee of the whole to discuss the expedited $111 million in borrowing. The next meeting is four days from today, Monday, May 12. That will be a special meeting to approve the bonds. Such meetings are often held to deal with emergencies. Beating the law’s enactment is such an emergency for the unpopular Red Plan. Such meetings are often held without public input so the public may have no opportunity to voice dissatisfaction with the Red Plan or the prematurely approved bonds.
What Senator Tom Bakk or Representative Mike Jaros who are carrying the changes to the law that the District hopes to escape is not known at this time.
Karen, from LDV pointed out this tidbit from today’s DNTribune:
“But there are other reasons why Duluth might not seem as
attractive to homebuyers as neighboring communities,
Garnett said: Continued uncertainty about the school
district’s future building decisions scares away some
homeowners who worry they can’t count on their
neighborhood school sticking around;”
And Karen also pointed this out pertaining to the repeated use of the $125,000 average home price that the District partisans keep resting their fat little laurels on. Karen asks:
“The article also listed the 2007 median home sale
price of $153,000. So why does the SD continue to use
the $125,100?”
My latest Reader Weekly column. This concerns one of my recent posts which contends that the School Board plans additional levies to pay for the rest of the Red Plan that will account for 54% of the overall cost whereas last year’s levy raised 46% of the total cost.
And this is the evidence that the District still has a few million more to levy for.
Much to the surprise of the Duluth News Trib editors Mike Jaros’ bill to clip the Red Plan’s wings survives. Here’s the story.
Care to vote on it? Vote here. You will see today’s poll on the right hand side. As of this writing with about 80 votes cast, its running 54% for Mike’s bill, 40% opposed.
The Duluth School District has awarded $80,000 to a consulting group without bidding (Its such an old fashioned a thing to do) to put voters in a feel good mood in order to help pass the fall operational levy.

One last email to my LDV colleagues:
“The Dixon Administration keeps telling us that there is no connection between the fall operational levy referendum and the Red Plan.
But what happens to the payment schedule for the Red Plan if the operational levy fails? Do we just tell the banks and the contractors……”Thanks for lending us your money and doing this work for free.”
When the levy fails, as it surely will without a vote on the Red Plan, I think we will discover a remarkable connection between the two and you can be sure that the Red Plan payment schedule not the operations budget is the hungry mouth that will be fed. The operations budget will be like the weaker baby bird in a nature film that is pushed out of the nest by its more powerful sibling.
Harry”
An afterthought of an email sent just after the previous email.
“Nilsen also says that her Board has always counted on an operational levy passing this fall…….to make their plans work!
Well guess what? Her plans aren’t going to work.
Harry”
This email about Nancy Nilsen’s reply to my post is a little more aggressive than my normal blog posts. I sent it to the members of Let Duluth Vote who are rightfully bitter about losing their right to vote. But the snide comment at the end does reflect the attitude I’m adopting after a year of stonewalling by the School Board.
“I stand by my post. While it is theoretically possible that the next nine successive school boards will take money out of operations to pay for the $407 million Red Plan obligation it will cost $11 million more annually to do this than is being levied now in property taxes. Taken out of our taxes that $11 million over twenty years would be 54% of the total $407 million. The current levy is 46% of the total Red Plan costs.
And about those savings. Even Dixon only claims that there will be $5.3 million in annual savings from his building plan not $11 million. I think that two thirds of the $5.3 million figure is a fraud but lets assume its true. That still leaves the District scrambling to find $6.7 million a year to fund the Red Plan from its operations or from a gift from Bill and Melinda Gates, OR maybe other tax levies sneakily passed to pay for it. One way or another the taxpayers will pay for the Red Plan - all $407 million of it. As for the sales of buildings. Twenty years times $6.7 million equals $134 million dollars. I don’t recall anyone saying that the School District could make that kind of money by selling off its old schools.
Nilsen must be smoking something I gave up in college.
Harry”
Nancy Nilsen, Chair of the Duluth School Board rebuts my post which was sent to her by a member of Let Duluth Vote.
Hello *****,
There is definitely some misinformation in this article. We have levied for all of it. There is not another levy for 54%. We levied for the whole amount last year and it is what is being seen in your current property tax.
The cost of the project is $257 million. With inflation over the 5 years that it will take to implement it, the cost is $293 million. Just like when you purchase a home and pay interest over the life of the loan, we have to do the same thing. If you take the interest into consideration, then you get to the $407 million. The reason it is lower that originally stated is because we got such a good bond rate when we sold the first set of bonds back in January. Interest rates are excellent right now, which is allowing us to save millions in interest expense.
With that said, what we need and have levied for is $125 million. The reason we don’t have to levy for the whole $293 million is because we will be selling all the property that we will no longer need and we will be taking the savings from building closures and applying that to the project. For example, we will not need as many overhead type staff such as principles, vice-principles, secretaries, ect. The money saved from not paying these people and from increased energy efficient systems will go to help pay off the project.
If we don’t decrease the number of buildings we don’t get these savings, so it is not like we have that money to use for programming now. Once the debt is paid off, those savings can go back into programming.
We have said all along that we are going to need an operating levy passed this November. The state does not give us enough money to operate our district. We could close every building in this district and not have enough money to operate. So there will be some difficult decisions coming up soon, but hopefully the citizen’s will allow us to pass the operating levy in November to help with the operating side.
I hope I have answered your questions. If not, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Thank you for your interest.
Sincerely,
Nancy Nilsen
Mike’s bill will not be challenged on the floor of the House of Representives by Rep. Tom Huntley. Its going to the conference committee.
The Hermantown Star takes umbrage to the nose-out-of-joint treatment of the Wrenshall School District by Duluth’s Superintendent Dr. Dixon.
Salient point:
“We applaud the Wrenshall School Board for starting to think outside the government box and openly soliciting Duluth students. In an advertisement last week, we saw — “Red PLAN not your plan? Why not change your PLAN and open enroll at Wrenshall today.”
There is nothing wrong with inviting people to take a look at your product and then make a decision. It happens every day in the private sector. Duluth Superintendent Keith Dixon stated in the local daily paper that Wrenshall was trashing his district and putting it down for their own benefit. We do not believe that to be true.
If the Red Plan was truly as strong as leadership within the Duluth School Districts believes, then the Wrenshall ad would not exist or be worthy of a reply. We believe there will be more districts taking Wrenshall’s lead and going after Duluth students.”
A couple weeks ago a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune was in town interviewing people for a story about the Red Plan. At first she told us it would be in last Sunday’s paper. It wasn’t. I just checked online and it doesn’t seem to be in this Sunday’s paper either. Maybe it won’t appear at all. I took a few moments to send her some additional information in an email should she see fit to add it to the eventual story. Here’s what I wrote to her.
“******,
We found out last week just how much more we can expect our property taxes to go up because of the Red Plan. So far St. Louis County is only levying 46% of the $407 million cost of the Red Plan. The public will not be happy when, not if, the other 54% is levied.
This is now being treated with kid gloves by the Superintendent who has his allies saying that he’d like to make a “deal” with the citizens. This is the deal. The District will only raise taxes by $125 million. (He’s not counting interest) Of course, the whole plan will cost $407 million so we have been scratching our heads trying to figure out what he means.
What Dr. Dixon is suggesting is preposterous. He is saying that this Board will guarantee that the $11 million additional annual costs of the plan (including interest) over the next twenty years will come not from further increases in the local property tax but from the school operations budget. The Red Plan supporters have been claiming that school operations will save $5.3 million annually but that’s less than half of the increased $11 million annual cost.
So, beyond the reported $5.3 million savings (and I maintain that only about a third of it is savings the rest being staff cuts) future school boards will have to cut an additional $6.7 million from school operations to pay for the Red Plan every year for the next twenty years. Dixon may be able to guarantee that his supine school board will do this while he’s still around to mesmerize them but there will be nine more elections over the next 19 years of the Red Plan and he will have no authority to reach into the future to force those school boards to do the same thing. Oh, they will have to pay for the Red Plan but by doing it Dixon’s way they will cripple the school system.
The 46% of the Red Plan costs that is already being levied against Duluth district voters is $9.6 million a year. That includes interest payments and over twenty years it will total $192 million dollars. The 54% which has yet to be levied will be $11 million a year more and it too includes interest payments. Over twenty years the $11 million increase will add up to $220 million dollars. Dixon is promising that this $220 million will not actually be levied against the taxpayers because it will all be taken out of school operations. Together the $9.6 million already being levied and the $11 million add up to $412 million. I’ve rounded out these numbers so they are off by a couple million at the end. The District’s finance people originally sent in their cost estimates to the State Dept of Education which showed the costs of the Red Plan to be $437 million. This calculation is on page 79 of their proposal for the State’s review and comment. Some months later they announced that they had figured out how to structure the debt so that they could save $30 million thereby reducing the total cost to $407 million. The figures I’ve just given you are off of this by five million dollars.
The property tax information I’ve just outlined came from Donald Dicklich the St. Louis County Auditor.
The “promise” that Dixon has made can’t be kept. The school staff is already nervous about this year’s cuts. The promise guarantees future annual cuts of an even more draconian nature. Such is the promise of the Red Plan.
The School Board got its first bids in for the first two summer projects last week. They came in a few thousand dollars below initial estimates. There is rejoicing in the Administration. Its a little like a couple of chipmunks running out on the highway to grab an acorn and giving themselves high fives for their accomplishment a few seconds before they are flattened by a truck.
Harry Welty”
Senator Yvonne Prettner Solon has just sent a letter asking her fellow Senators to help her prevent Duluth voters from voting on the Red Plan.
I’ll reproduce the letter shortly and show you my analysis of her faulty thinking. Time and again from Let Duluth Vote’s early success finding signers of our petitions, to Red Plan opponant Gary Glass’s blow out election to the School Board to the News Tribune’s online polls vast majorities of Duluth’s voters have made clear they do not like being stripped of their right to vote on the Red Plan.
Even Yvonne has has a survey about the Red Plan on her Senate website. 58% of its respondants disagree with the Senator. Its question #12 and it reads as follows:
12. EDUCATION: K-12
The Duluth School District plans to implement a long-range facilities plan to consolidate, renovate, expand and construct new buildings in the district. Under state law, the district can undertake the proposal without a vote of area citizens. Do you agree or disagree with the District’s plans?
Yes, I agree with the District’s plans
69 Response Total
42% Response PercentNo, I disagree
95 Response Total
58% Response PercentTotal Respondents 164
(skipped this question) 15
Here’s a much less muddled way to understand Dr. Dixon’s “promise.”
David Ross today in the Budgeteer. This thinking comes straight out of a Chamber of Horrors.
Some of the first good news on the Red Plan in weeks. The early bids on the unnecessary work at Stowe and Lakewood schools came in lower than expected.
According to the story:
“Some community members have expressed concern that Johnson Controls, the program manager for the long-range plan, might hand over work to its own contractors, but Johnson Controls did not bid on either project, said Kerry Leider, facilities director for the Duluth district.”
Gary Glass made a point of asking the Administration at the recent Special School Board meeting whether JCI had won any bids on the Red Plan work. Gary suspected that the answer “no” that the administration gave him to his question was something less than straight forward.
Its not only the Duluth School District that faces millions in cuts to its budget this year. The City of Duluth faces $5.4 million in cuts and they will be painful.
Representative Mike Jaros has successfully added his bill HR4127 to the House’s Omnibus Tax bill. This is important because it will be difficult to remove his amendment from the House Floor when the whole “omnibus” tax bill comes before the floor for a vote.
Mike has made some changes to it since it was first drafted. Currently Mike has it set up so that the Red Plan will be vulnerable to a “reverse referendum” just like other building plans are in every other Minnesota School District. In other words, once Mike’s law is passed Duluth voters would be able to petition to place the Red Plan on the ballot. 1500 signatures is all that would be necessary to get it on the ballot. Child’s play.
This may not be the final language adopted when the Senate and House tax bills go to a conference committee because Senator Tom Bakk’s original language simply kills the Red Plan without requiring a reverse referendum. Let Duluth Vote will be satisfied with either way of dealing with the Red Plan.
Mike is optimistic that Governor Pawlenty will not find anything in the bill to merrit a veto.