Last night, the Champaign Park District Board of Commissioners voted against offering Dodds Park for a Central High School. In order to move forward with any land swap of Park District land, a supermajority of elected park commissioners must vote in favor. Since there are five elected commissioners, at least four votes were needed to swap Dodds Park and move forward with Unit 4’s request. At the end of the night, it wasn’t even close with a majority (3/5) Park Commissioners voting against the Dodds Park land swap.
On February 25, the Park District hosted a special public hearing on Dodds Park.
While a majority of the public spoke out against offering Dodds Park at that hearing, the public was clearly divided. Last night, many people again addressed the elected park commissioners during public input , but this time not a single person from the public spoke up in favor swapping Dodds Park.
I want to make it clear that I do not have dog in this fight and I think both Interstate Drive and Dodds Park would both make fine locations for a Central High School.
Over the next few days, some will probably make a big deal about who voted which way and why. I suspect politicos will even try and spin this in favor of their preferred school board or park board candidate. While this conversation should be about kids who are learning in trailers as Unit 4 faces a growing capacity crisis, the political action and rhetoric have clearly been counter productive to that concern.
On the political side, Dodds Park was a simple puzzle to solve. You needed to convert two “NO” votes on the park board to “YES” votes. Anyone who wanted Dodds Park to become a reality simply needed to make a compelling case and convert the “NO” votes.
This is politics 101, not House of Cards.
The conventional way to do this is to start and maintain a dialogue with elected officials who control your destiny. Doing this effectively allows you to make a case, but also helps you know where you stand. In one of the most epic political backfires I’ve ever seen, Unit 4 instead decided to put public pressure on the park commissioners. Once the public weighed in, the park board not only took it off the table, members of the public and even park commissioner Tim McMahon mocked Unit 4 with “no means no.”
That was brutal. I don’t think anyone can pretend to be surprised those “NO” votes dug in deeper after this political maneuver, but it was interesting to witness the public helping to convert a “YES” vote to a third “NO” vote.
As a result, any chance at Dodds is no longer feasible any time in the near future. The only winner in this was Joe Petry. It is a always a good thing for a mayoral candidate, especially one with a limited public profile, to get their name in the paper and build name recognition. The timing of all this was very convenient for Petry and it definitely worked out in his favor. How many times was this guy mentioned in the newspaper? Heck, he even took a break in the middle of the middle of the meeting last night to do press interviews. I wish I could give Team Petry credit for a brilliant PR strategy, but I’ve been assured again and again that Joe was putting the community first and not his political concerns. It was also made clear to me that when a Petry campaign operative addressed the Unit 4 board and asked that board to make a public request to the park district, she was doing so as a concerned parent and not representing the Petry campaign.
While Joe Petry did plenty of interviews, I think it is safe say Unit 4’s political play only made it more likely that more students will be learning in trailers. A mayor candidate’s job is to generate press. Unit 4 should have been focused on NOT giving people a reason to vote “NO” on upcoming referendum.
Instead, they are effectively accumulating opponents when they should be doing the exact opposite. I feel bad for the school district because they did a very good job during an extensive site selection and are being heavily criticized by many in the public who chose not to be a part of that process until just before the Mayor’s race. While critics of the school board are proposing some very creative and interesting ideas, I suspect the students who are learning in trailers wish these people would have been involved much earlier in the process.