School district reduces offer for church land in Piedmont
September 30, 2012 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
The Duluth school district has cut in half its offer to Christ Lutheran Church in Piedmont Heights for land it wants to purchase for recreation space, according to a document disseminated to church members.
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JCI filled its coffers with designs that took homes away from families and didn’t bother to use a building with existing rec space. That $50 mil Lincoln Middle school with the long drive, no sidewalks, artificial turf doesn’t have what a school built at Central could have had, tennis, ball,football, track, public transportation. To top it off, they want to low ball a church for land. Vote NO.
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Elementary students don’t actually need less space just because the state law has been relaxed. It is incomprehensible to me that the school board would have proceeded with the construction of this school without having adequate space lined up BEFORE groundbreaking. Research shows again and again that active kids who get time outdoors turn out to have much better attention and behavior in the classroom. This site should only have been used if the land purchase was a done deal. The Piedmont school site is only one of the big problems with the Red Plan. What’s Plan B if the church says “no”? I guess the school kids and teachers will have to “make do” with the minimum green space. Is the lowest common denominator what was promised to us by accepting the Red Plan? No, it is not what was promised, but it seems like that’s what we’re getting.
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Thats the way JCI trained the School District to do business since the Red Plan – go ahead despite laws, rules, permits – bulldoze then when you are far enough along, if someone complains or asks for permits, or tried to deny you then they cried foul against “the children” – thats how most of the Red Plan projects were completed – Denfeld’s & Mac Arthur’s street vacations, East’s (ordean)’s too large stadium for the property & land use, the current status of Congdon, Lester Park’s street vacation…the list goes on and on. One poor decision and act of bullying or manipulating the Council, the neighborhoods, taxpayers and of course in this case, the congregation of this church . More of the same – make the rules as you go. And now, as if Duluth wasn’t dumb enough to hire this firm without a performance contract after the Steam plant fiasco- I hear Hermantown is hiring them to take their taxpayers to the cleaners too. I wonder what “efficiencies” they will come up with and the millions it will cost that community. Still waiting for a reporter that is willing to do the research and see if any of the cost savings promised to Duluth have appeared from our half a billion dollars spent on the Red Plan. Meanwhile, as evident by the tours of the recent new schools revealed., the class sizes are in the 42-47 students – so bad that the back row of a history class at Ordean East is facing sideways because that is the only way all the desks can fit in these new “bigger” classrooms.
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It seems as if the school district is at least trying to hold the line on spending. They recently had to prioritize what they were spending money on over at Congdon. But then again they have no choice now that the Red plan money is running low. Too bad Dixon and those in charge on the board at that time spent money like it was going out of style. Hermantown would be wise to learn from our mistakes with the Red plan. You need to have disipline when it comes time to decide what is included in these new schools. Just because people want a lot of extras doesn’t mean that they should be included. You have to balance adding extra lanes in a swimming pool vs something more practical like classrooms. Its no different than someone building a new house. You have to balance wants vs actual needs.
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Wow….just wow. Hard to imagine that Duluth got saddled with the HUGE debt for the Red plan and yet, “Not every elementary school in the district has its own green space for play areas.”
That’s just a really sad state of affairs.
Personally, I think a few less Smart Boards and little more playground space would have been a much better investment.
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Katy, I absolutely, whole-heartedly agree with you! Never thought I would type that!
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Katy, maybe the problem was that they needed one more ‘smart board’–the school board–BEFORE the Red Plan
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