It appears the five-member majority on the St. Louis County School Board is content to stonewall and threaten residents of the district, rather than deal openly and honestly with their concerns.

It’s difficult to draw any other conclusion from their performance Wednesday night at the Cook School. While I give credit to those board members who did show up for what they likely knew would be a contentious meeting, their refusal to respond to the most serious questions raised is extremely troubling. The concerns of area residents aren’t based on paranoid fantasy. They are based on a plain and logical reading of the district’s own budget documents. The board approved cuts in June of last year that significantly improved their budget situation, yet they continued to use outdated financial information, both in submissions to the state and to the public, right up until the Dec. 8 election.

Residents at Wednesday’s meeting wanted to know why. Instead of an answer they got a lecture from board chair Bob Larson, during which he suggested the 200-plus people in the room really didn’t care about education. That just made people angrier, and with good reason.

You would think that the board might be interested in asking some questions of their own. They’ve now seen the information suggesting that Johnson Controls presented inaccurate and misleading information, not just to state officials and the public, but to the board itself. If I were on that board, I’d want an explanation from Johnson Controls. But the board majority isn’t interested in exploring the issue.

And they’re not just resorting to stonewalling in their effort to ignore the facts. They’re using the tried and true tactics of intimidation. During Wednesday’s meeting, when board member Zelda Bruns began to talk about her own concerns about the numbers developed by Johnson Controls, board chair Larson tried to stop her from speaking. After some encouragement from the audience, Zelda continued and made a heartfelt apology for not speaking out sooner.

Larson also threw his weight around after the meeting, when he suggested I had accused Johnson Controls of intentionally padding the numbers to get state approval of the project. As the 200-plus witnesses there saw, I had raised the question, but never made a direct accusation in regards to intent.

As for Larson’s intent, it was clear. I should keep my mouth shut or I could face a SLAPP suit from an army of Johnson Controls lawyers. Litigation is certainly one of the hazards of challenging a Fortune 500 company, but in Minnesota, filing a SLAPP suit (which stands for Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) could get the company in further hot water. Using attorneys to stifle critics is not just unethical, it’s illegal in Minnesota, and would open Johnson Controls to an immediate countersuit. As for the merits of their case, I’d be more than happy to take our documentation before a judge. Truth is still considered a reasonable defense after all. And we’ve got the documentation for everything we’ve claimed.

Of course, the fireworks on Wednesday weren’t the first whiff of retaliation. At the school board’s Feb. 4 meeting, board member Darrell Bjerklie made a motion to take away $1 million in already-approved capital funding from Tower, Cook, and Orr in the event that construction plans were put on hold in those areas.

That suggestion got Zelda Bruns off her seat to take issue with the suggestion. She noted that the areas Bjerklie wanted to penalize were going to pay 75 percent of the cost of the bond measure. “And now we’re to be punished, I guess, for speaking out for what we think is right,” said Bruns. While Bjerklie later claimed his motion was not meant to be retaliatory, that certainly wasn’t the impression it left with many in the audience.

Apparently, with the facts on our side, the district doesn’t have a more constructive response. It’s about time they figure one out.

It’s one thing to ignore legitimate questions from the public. But this whole issue is likely headed to less forgiving venues, where direct questions can’t be met with lectures and diversions. If school board members feel the heat now, it’s likely to get a whole lot hotter.