Need answers to these questions, and more information, before I make any endorsements…
Minot city election 2020
I
have not heard answers to these questions from the current candidates yet:
Questions
for the City Council Candidates
Q: What are your thoughts on breed-specific
legislation and vicious dog ordinances?
Q: Especially now that we are encountering
shortages in the food supply chain, will you vote to allow people to keep
chickens in the city limits of Minot?
Q: Hire from within — instead of trying to
bring in a new supreme ruler ** from elsewhere over the head of the city
employees, promote one of the current department heads to the city manager
position.
(** 1st we had the parking garage boondoggle;
2nd we had an abusive management style. We **CAN** be taught — we do NOT need
a third strike)
Question for the School Board Candidates:
Q: What is your vision for the current Central
Campus building?
(If your answer is “turn it into a middle
school” I will not only vote AGAINST you, I will contribute a dollar to
your opponent that has a better idea)
Yes — this is not new stuff…
These questions are pretty much a rerun of my
questions from the previous election, because the things that matter to me have
not changed.
Even though my own children are graduated, there is still plenty
of school
stuff that matters to me. There are some declared candidates running for the
Minot School Board, and I have some points that need to be considered by the
school board candidates.
Minot Public
School System needs school busses
The Minot Public School
system needs to provide school bussing for students that live too far away from
the schools to safely walk to school.
Originally, the MPS was designed
around a “neighborhood school” system. The intent was for all children to be
able to walk to the neighborhood elementary school, and that school was located
within one mile of the child’s house. Currently, as I understand the plan, the
school system is dreaming of switching toward fewer larger schools, with each
school then having four sections (classes, most of us ordinary people would
call them) for each grade.
If the schools are not going to be
located in neighborhoods where children can walk to school, then the school
system needs to provide bussing to get the children to the school safely.
Building a New Middle School
The MPS has been pushing for a new
middle school, but the bond issue to put it in the current Central Campus
building has been voted down. Twice.
Why?
Central Campus is actually in
walking distance of Jim
Hill Middle
School. A long walk, but reasonable distance for
middle school students. This means the same neighborhood children could walk to
either school. A far more intelligent location for the new middle school would
be to locate it on the land the school district owns near the new John Hoeven
Elementary School. Then Minot would have one middle school located on the south
edge, one in central Minot,
and one on the north edge of town.
Minot’s New High School
A
new high school should be located on the land the district owns near Erik Ramstad Middle School,
or else we could probably save on construction costs by building it in the
south near John Hoeven while building the new middle school there. If Minot continues growing,
eventually there will need to be one built in both of these locations.