As many commenters have pointed out, there seems to be a controversy brewing over how District 150’s counterproposal was handled, especially by the district, but to some extent by the city.

First, the Journal Star reported on Friday that “Hinton told [school] board members about the proposals before he delivered them [to Mayor Ardis], but they all declined comment Thursday. Many said they looked at a draft document and didn’t feel comfortable discussing it.”

As one of my readers pointed out, “Final authority for all matters concerning the District lies with the Board of Education,” according to District 150’s Board of Education Policy Manual. So one wonders why Hinton is giving the board a draft document, then presenting it to the city as the school board’s official counterproposal before the board even has a chance to discuss it.

One story I heard through the grapevine (so this is all hearsay) is that Clare Jellick of the Journal Star actually got a copy of the district’s counterproposal on Wednesday (no one will admit to leaking it), and so Hinton hurriedly delivered it to the city on Thursday afternoon. Supposedly he didn’t want city officials to learn about it by reading it in the paper Friday morning. But that just sounds odd to me, for some reason. Hinton’s been around a while. Surely he knows he could have just told Jellick that it was a “work in progress” and said he couldn’t comment on it until the board had a chance to discuss it, right? It’s not like this guy has never worked with the media before.

There seem to be two possibilities: (1) Hinton acted completely on his own in presenting this draft document to Mayor Ardis, in which case the board could declare the proposal void and come up with a new, board-approved proposal to present to the city; or (2) the board approved this document, but not in a public forum — in which case I’m pretty sure that’s a violation of the Open Meetings Act — and Hinton accidentally acted on it before the board legally approved it. Either way, one would think Hinton would get some sort of reprimand for acting without authority.

Moving on to the city…. On Friday, the Journal Star said, “Councilman Bob Manning said internal talks [on the proposal from District 150] likely won’t start until next week.” But then, at 11 a.m. Friday, there was a press conference where the Mayor and Councilman Manning announced the city was rejecting the offer and would not offer any further counterproposals. That was a quick change of plans.

“First District Councilman Clyde Gulley said he didn’t understand why the City Council didn’t discuss the proposals Thursday night, when it was already gathered for a budget meeting,” the Journal Star reported today.

Now, I personally don’t see this as being that big of a deal. This is a third-district issue and up to Manning’s discretion if he wants to pursue it further. It’s never been brought before the council, and there’s no law saying Manning has to pursue this or get council approval to abandon the idea. The $500,000 Manning was proposing giving to the school for land acquisition would have come out of money earmarked for third-district projects, but had not been formally proposed to the council yet. If Manning decides to drop the issue and not bring a proposal before the council for a vote, then that’s his prerogative.

Based on the proposal he received, I’m sure Manning saw no other option than to end negotiations. The district’s counterproposal wasn’t any different than what they’ve been pursuing all along; one would be hard-pressed to find any kind of compromise in their counteroffer. The district essentially asked for three times as much money as they were offered by the city and a larger site. Manning had already offered all the money he had to offer, so he has no wiggle room to come back with a counteroffer on funding.

Worse, the district knows full well that the city has only been pursuing this explicitly because they don’t want the new school built at Glen Oak Park. So why is one of the counteroffers from the district to give the city the old Glen Oak building in exchange for $500,000 for property acquisition at the park site? Talk about a slap in the face! Hello — if the city were willing to consider putting the school in the park, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. How could Manning conclude anything other than that the district isn’t really interested in trying to find a workable solution?