Of Cats and Kids
Not quite $66 million mystery
Posted by: Carol Lombardi
Thursday, March 9, 2006 12:00 AM
Nearly every discussion of Champaign's $66 million dollar question seems to come equipped with a referral to Unit - 4 Excellence, a web site promoting the referendum.I'm glad that these proud folks are invested in our community. That's a great thing, to be invested in one's own community. It's so great, in fact, that we should thank them personally. Oh. Except we don't know who they are.
I'm not in the habit of taking advice, especially financial advice, from people who insist on anonymity. If an anonymous person calls my house and asks for my bank account and social security numbers, I don't give it to them, because I don't know who they are or what they are up to.
People (i.e. voters) might be a little more open to the Unit-4 Excellence propaganda - um, I mean information - if they knew those details. Who are you, and what are you up to?
There are no names on their web site. And they chose to have their domain name registered by a company in St. Louis (Price-Miner Creative Strategies, 5248 Waterman Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108), which also acts as their technical and administrative contact (bob@PRICEMINER.NET). At least their e-mail address is local (u4excellence@insightbb.com) - but it is also anonymous.
Unit-4 excellence also has a mailing list, but the contact for that is not easily traceable, either.
Unit-4 Excellence does seem interested in you, though, as evidenced by their privacy policy.
This couldn't possibly be a political thing, right? Because this is all about the kids, and how this $66 million will help provide a "quality education." (Can you imagine how far Einstein could have gone if his schools had been air conditioned?) I'm SURE no one involved in this has any ulterior motives, and certainly has nothing to hide.
So, as the Good Witch of the North would say, "come out, come out, wherever you are&" and tell us why you think money should fall from a star.
For what it's worth: Shortly after I posted this, the following text was posted on the Unit-4 Excellence site: "Paid for by U4Excellence. Not paid for at taxpayers' expense.
Webmaster: Jason Rittenberg, Unit-4 resident and student volunteer."
Comments
Are you kidding me? I know the News Gazette has been very negative toward this referendum but you had an article last night that talked about how much money the Unit 4 Excellence committee had raised and mentioned a couple of people that were involved. I live in Urbana but why are you making this some big conspiracy? You are a newspaper reporter, if you think there are ulterior motives, I would hope you would use the newspapers considerable resources to investigate.
Posted by drink on March 9, 2006 at 2:41 PM
Carol,
My name is Michael Miller. I have been a resident of Champaign since April of 2002. I am serving as a co-chair of the U4Excellence Campaign Committee because I believe that Public Education is the most valuable service that government can provide. I believe we should take every opportunity to wisely invest in the quality of public education services. Thank you for taking some time to explore our website. As you may have read in the NG, our campaign is low on funds and we are doing everything we can to get the word out about the referendum and make sure people understand the details available. In the midst of all this, taking credit for that work has taken a backseat to doing the work. In the interest of full disclosure, I will consult with those who have helped with the campaign so far and post the names of people who agree to do so. Please let me know if you have further questions of the U4Excellence Campaign. You can submit a question at our website. http://www.u4excellence.org
Posted by MichaelMiller on March 9, 2006 at 2:53 PM
Find the complete text of the 2002 Unit 4 Consent Decree and related court case at http://big-e-blog.blogspot.com/
Posted by BigE on March 11, 2006 at 5:10 PM
