Duluth City Councilor Garry Krause isn't giving up his efforts to put the School Board's long-range building plan before voters, even if it would just be in the form of a nonbinding advisory referendum.
Krause has drafted a resolution for Thursday's City Council meeting that, if passed, would require an advisory referendum if any issue related to the red plan -- such as vacating streets or condemning property -- comes before the council.
Such a referendum would give the council a better sense of what Duluth residents are thinking on this issue, Krause said. "Because the citizens are sending very upset, mixed messages, I think the councilors should have accurate input of what the community is thinking before we do act."
Krause earlier introduced a resolution asking the School Board to hold a referendum on its long-range facilities plan, commonly known as the red plan. But councilors voted 6-2 during an agenda session June 5 against such a vote.
Krause said he considered what other councilors said at that meeting when drafting his current resolution.
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"This one is entirely different," he said. "It doesn't involve the school district. It involves the City Council getting public input on its part of the red plan."
At least one city councilor, however, thinks adopting the resolution would be a waste of time and, possibly, money.
"I think it's dumber than the resolution that he introduced a week ago," Todd Fedora said, referring to the referendum's nonbinding status.
"It [the resolution] also refers to street vacation and eminent domain," Fedora said. "Those two clauses refer only to public property.The City Council has no say on the eminent domain proceeding that the School Board is undertaking on private property.
"My feeling is if Councilor Krause wants to be so involved in the school district, perhaps he should have stayed a School Board member," Fedora said.
Councilor Sharla Gardner, a critic of the red plan who wants the community to vote on it, hadn't seen Krause's new proposal yet.
"It sounds like a reasonable idea," she said, as long as it was held with a regular election. "I would have to think about the cost of an advisory referendum if we would have to do it at any other time. We have some serious budget crunches now. A couple thousand here, a couple thousand there, it all adds up."
Fedora called an advisory referendum "a waste of the taxpayers' dollars."
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While Krause's resolution is silent on when an advisory referendum would be held, he said Friday afternoon that he wouldn't subject taxpayers to the cost of a special election.
City Clerk Jeff Cox estimated a special election would cost about $30,000.
