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This whole thing was a farce from the start. First off, the school board decided to hold a special election, rather than putting the bond referendum on the ballot at the regular election time. Why is that significant? Because people normally vote in their township or city in regular elections. In this case, they had to vote at the school house. There was much confusion over which school they should go to vote. Why couldn't they vote at the nearest school instead? Rumors are that people from Linden Grove Township were turned away from the polls at the Cook school, since most of their children either attend or attended the Cook school, despite Linden Grove is in the Orr School voting area. Also, amid the confusion, by the time some people learned they were at the wrong voting place, when they went to the correct voting place for this bond issue, they were turned away within minutes of the 8PM voting deadline.

Coffee shop talk centers around the decision to hold a special election, rather than the regular election day, was a strategy by consultant JCI in an attempt to both confuse the voters and to reduce the voter participation rate in order to let the special interests gather their troups to the polls. Shame on the people who complain about their taxes and the loss of their school. They didn't vote. Some of them depended on Johnson Controls and the District's public relations agency, the Cook News-Herald, to inform them correctly.

Look at most communities where a school was closed. The retail sector disappeared, the cohesiveness of the community disappeared and home values depreciated. This school board does more damage to a community than any Wal-Mart could.

Tower-Soudan has already lost the historic portion of their school through demolition. Orr may end up being demolished as it is unlikely that any re-purposing can be found in the private sector. In the absence of that, people are once again looking to the government (our taxes) as the possible savior. That's no solution. Frankly, the land that the Orr School rests upon is worth more than the value of the school and land together. Orr, if they are wise, will remember that.

The subject moves to the Cook school. With the size of the footprint of this school, the location of the central heating system from the pool and newer sections of the school make it prohibitive to find alternate uses for this beautiful building. Afterall, these buildings were built to be schools, and those pushing the bond referendum (eg. teachers union, school board, Johnson Controls) should have realized the consequences of their actions. But they didn't care...period!

It won't be until Orr and Cook realize the same consequences that Tower-Soudan, Embarrass, Toivola-Meadowlands and other Iron Range communities already have, that people wish they would have done more when it counted.

From: Selling the Orr School

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