Political Stupidity Keeps Pulling me Back In

I’m TRYING to go on this political sabbatical, I really am!  But stupidity at the level of what went on at the Plano ISD meeting has to be witnessed- and answered.  Here is my letter to the group of arrogant buffoons (Nancy Humphries and Tammy Richards showing the only sanity here):

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I can’t say I personally seen such thinly disguised contempt for the viewpoint of the average voter and citizen by an elected body as I witnessed tonight since a 1983 Duncanville City Council meeting where they literally told the audience that the voters got it wrong on the DART election and rescheduled another one immediately afterward (The outcome for the ‘redo’ was worse, and 4 of the 5 council members were out within 12 months.)

Where to start on this hasty decision to spend $6.5 million to buy a new building on an Academy whose very definition is not yet complete?  Even with underused classroom space more than adequate to use existing facilities?

• The recorded admission that the Board makes non-personnel, non-contractual decisions in executive session- in CLEAR violation of the Open Meetings Act?
• The restriction of public comment to well under half of those who formally requested to speak on the issue and for a total of 30 minutes, while a Board member felt bloviating for 15 minutes was worthy of the time for a meeting supposedly that was a public hearing?
• The presentation of the project occurring AFTER public comment, so no one in the public could address the comments to the actual numbers and facility details (See below)?
• ZERO acknowledgement of the MAJORITY public opposition to the project (Carrolyn’s statement being denied by the people who actually showed up)
• The argument that you have to trust the staff; a staff dumb enough to accept a 60 day limitation on 100K earnest money, on a building that had been empty for YEARS and commercial property market still in a nightmare of non-movement?
• The insistence that private companies will come up with ‘pig in a poke’ money- expecting us to ‘trust our betters’ even though a similar ‘betters’ have massively underperformed on private money for things like the Arts Center?  Anyone who expects the same result as in the flush years must believe in unicorns and the Tooth Fairy.

OK: let’s get beyond that and let me give you to just a single point your ‘trustworthy’ staff and committees either missed or are smoke-screening.  Have any of you actually worked in a facility like that?  I spent 2 years in one and I’ve got two words that will prove to be a major unreported expense:

SOUND ABATEMENT!

A school is NOT an office.  Especially one practicing ‘collaborative education’.  The noise level is considerably higher and- without interior work, it will be like trying to do surgery during an artillery barrage (Possible, as my Dad found out in Korea, but not efficient).  The 200K startup won’t get close to doing the job (and considering the building is EMPTY the cost of equipping it wasn’t made clear). Possibly you have been given some presentation on this that the Great Uwashed are not privy to?

Just one issue, you might have heard about if you’d had any interest in interacting with those paying the bill (including the payments for those ‘free’ bonds.)  I could probably walk through the building and come up with a half dozen more potential ones in 10 minutes.  (For example, bathroom capacity, sewage requirements of significant food service, etc.)  Glossing over the traffic issue didn’t exactly make friends of the site’s neighbors either.

I’d like to thank Nancy and Tammy for their votes for sanity here.  As for the rest, I so look forward to seeing some of your replacements on the Board whoever they may be.  I’ll have them reference the video of this meeting on how not to interact with the public and the voters.