Mixed messages about the legal effect of bond passage, part 1

Before I discuss the bond proposal in more detail, I want to discuss a threshold question: If the voters pass the bond proposal, to what extent is the district legally constrained in its use of the bond money?

That’s a question raised by the Minnesota news story I cited in this post. As I wrote there, it may be better to ask: can voters have enough of a comfort level with the possibilities that they don’t have to worry about legal remedies? But how the district responds to the legal question now can affect people’s confidence about how it will act in the future. In this series of posts, I’ll review how the district has addressed the legal question over the last year.

In October, the administration provided the board with the following statement:

What if an event or events happen that require the District change plans over the five-year period? Can the District choose not to complete a project that was listed as part of the voter referendum? Remember, ALL of the projects included on the ballot MUST be completed. It is not appropriate for the District to not complete certain projects. If the District does not complete all the projects, the failure to do so may subject the District and the Bonds to voter challenge. The projects as described in the ballot and to the voters MUST be done. The District can’t decide Project XYZ is no longer feasible after four years and simply not do it. Also, if there is excess capacity and the District wants to use it to build an auditorium, but that wasn’t a project included on the ballot, then G.O. Bonds may not be issued nor can G.O. Bond proceeds be used for that project.

(The all caps appear in the original; emphasis in bold added here.)

That’s a pretty strong statement about the legal effect of bond passage. As we discussed the issue in that work session, though, a somewhat different message came through. The board’s chief financial officer said:

Can you change plans once it’s approved? No, you can’t. You have to do what you tell the voters you’re going to do. Pure and simple, you’ve got to carry it through. Now, if you issue the bonds, that is. If you don’t issue the bonds, then you can do the projects using sales tax dollars and not run amok of the law in what you said you were going to do in the referendum. So, even though they gave you approval to do these projects, if you don’t issue the bonds for them and you choose to do them through sales tax, that’s okay. But once you issue the bonds, you better carry through with what you told the voters you were going to do. That’s how you have to look at this.

(Emphasis added; full recording here.)

Voter passage of the bond proposal is different from the actual issuance of the bonds, which occurs later (in some instances, years later) and in several stages. To issue the actual bonds, the district has to be very specific about the planned use of the money, and its legal obligations at that point are much clearer and more constraining. But the chief financial officer’s statement left some uncertainty about how constrained the district would be after voter approval but before it issues the bonds.

This basic question would arise several times as the board discussed the bond proposal. Continued in part 2.

Bond campaign fundraising reports

Both sides of the bond campaign had to file contribution and expenditure reports yesterday. The “Yes” side’s report is here; its previous report is here. The “No” side’s (only) report is here.

So far, the “Yes” campaign has raised $82,977.31—that’s about twenty times what a typical school board campaign costs in our district. Seventeen donors gave $1000 or more; those donors accounted for almost three-quarters of the total. They are:

Iowa City Area Chamber of Commerce	$17,500
MidwestOne Bank	$ 7,506.31
University of Iowa Community Credit Union	$ 7,500
Hills Bank	$ 7,500
Southgate Development Service	$ 4,000
Gary Watts Real Estate & Development	$ 2,500
Neumann Monson, Inc.	$ 2,000
Hayek, Moreland, Smith, Bergus, L.L.P.	$ 2,000
Arlington Development, Inc.	$ 2,000
U.S. Bank	$ 1,200
Houser Enterprises	$ 1,000
RPB Properties, L.L.C.	$ 1,000
Rohrbach Associates, P.C.	$ 1,000
TLD, Inc.	$ 1,000
Cedar Rapids Building Trades, CR/IC	$ 1,000
Mark Moen and Bobby Jett (jointly)	$ 2,000

 

On the “No” side, there were no $1000 donors. One person gave $200, and no one else gave more than $100. The total raised was $1721.

The “Yes” side has spent $36,992.49. The “No” side has spent $814.48.

How much should bond voters worry about buyer’s remorse?

I’ve been intending to post more about the district’s bond proposal. Unfortunately, the topic is so big that it quickly swamps the blog post format, and nobody wants to read a really long blog post. (I’m not sure anyone wants to read a short blog post.) So I’m going to try to post some thoughts one piece at a time in the hope that they will add up to something together.

Yesterday, this article was making the rounds on social media:

A school district in Minnesota put forward a $98 million bond proposal, accompanied by a publicized plan to renovate its older schools. Soon after voters approved the proposal, the district began planning to close three of the schools it had planned to renovate. Voters sued, but the court rejected the challenge, concluding (according to the newspaper) that the changes in the plan “did not rise to a level of a ‘drastic change’ to the overall bond purpose.”

This story touches an already sensitive nerve in our district, since many voters feel something similar happened here in 2013. The district asked voters for permission to use sales tax revenues for facilities improvements, without making any mention of school closures. Soon after the voters approved the proposal, the district began floating multiple school closure possibilities. Even though participants in the district’s community workshops lopsidedly preferred scenarios that did not close any schools, the school board approved a facilities plan that included an elementary school closure. It did so despite the fact that enrollment was growing and the district was planning to build new capacity in less student-dense areas.

Should voters worry that what happened in Minnesota could happen here if our bond passes? The relevant legal questions are governed by state law, and Iowa law is not necessarily the same as Minnesota’s. I’ll probably blog some more about the legal questions involved (there are many gray areas). The legal issues are kind of beside the point, though, because if you’re telling people “You can always rely on your legal remedies,” you’ve probably already lost them. What people want is sufficient confidence that they won’t have to resort to legal remedies, which is a different question—one that is as much about trust in the current and future district leadership (and thus in future district voters) as it is about law.

On that point, it doesn’t help that the district has floated school closure scenarios several times in recent years, including again in 2015. If the bond plan does end up building many hundreds more elementary seats than we have students to fill (as the district’s own capacity figures and enrollment projections indicate*), it’s easy to imagine school officials asking, “Why are we paying to run twenty-one schools when the kids will all fit into eighteen or nineteen?” It’s easy to imagine it because it’s consistent with arguments we’ve been hearing from inside our school system for years.

So I’m going to (somewhat discursively, over the course of multiple posts) work through some thoughts about capacity, enrollment, and other issues, with an eye on whether the bond plan makes sense and on the degree to which voters can have confidence in how the plan will be implemented.

*I think it matters (a lot) that the district’s numbers show that the plan will build 1,896 more seats than its enrollment projections show a need for. On the other hand, for reasons I’ll discuss, I don’t have much confidence in either the enrollment projections or the capacity figures. So my objection is as much about the lack of supporting data as it is about the specific discrepancy between the two sets of numbers. In other words, I don’t think we have any clear idea how many “excess seats” we are building, though I do think there’s reason to believe it’s a significant number.

Affordable housing and the bond

There was a joint governmental entities meeting last night that included county, school board, and city officials from Johnson County. The first topic on the agenda was affordable housing. I wanted to attend the meeting but could not. Here’s what I would have liked to say.

When I’ve written about why I don’t support the district’s bond proposal, I’ve focused mostly on my concerns about the specifics of the plan, and in particular the capacity expansions. I haven’t focused much on the proposal’s effect on the tax burden. That’s largely because I don’t view political issues from an anti-tax perspective; in general, I’d like to see more (and more progressive) taxation to support a higher level of social services, including education. It’s also true that I’m personally fortunate enough that I can afford the increase in taxes that will result from the bond proposal.

Not everyone is as fortunate, though. And it’s important to remember that the bond proposal will be funded by property taxes, which are not a progressive form of taxation. (And if SAVE is extended, those projects may eventually be funded using sales tax revenues, which are even less progressive.)

Our district does have an affordable housing problem. Proponents of the bond want you to know that our tax rate is low compared to that of other big Iowa school districts, but they don’t linger on the fact that our assessed values are some of the highest. Many people have a hard time finding local housing options they can afford. And the politically feasible solutions are all incremental; there is no quick fix.

If the bond proposal confined itself to demonstrable needs—for example, renovations to our older buildings, accessibility upgrades, and new capacity where it’s urgently needed—it would be easier to conclude that the benefits outweigh the incremental effect of making housing less affordable. (The effect would also be smaller.) But the worthy parts of the plan have been bundled with a set of capacity expansions that, according to the district’s own data, result in building 1,896 more seats than our enrollment projections show a need for even ten years from now—to the point where the price tag of the bond reached $191 million plus transaction costs and interest, which we’re told is the biggest bond proposal by far in Iowa’s history.

In response to that argument, bond proponents have argued that our enrollment projections are probably underpredicting growth. I agree that they almost certainly underpredict growth in some areas (mainly Coralville), though most of the excess seats are not in those areas. I also agree that enrollment projections seven or ten years out are not reliable. But saying “Don’t worry, our data is probably wrong!” is not a great argument for enacting a $191 million plan that includes capacity expansions that are seven years out on the timeline. It’s an argument for limiting the bond to first two or three years of projects and then re-assessing needs.

Addressing the problem of affordable housing doesn’t mean never supporting any tax increases or bond proposals. But it should at the very least mean taking seriously the need to justify each element of any major spending plan, especially one that will be paid for through property taxes. I don’t see how we’ve met that standard with this proposal.

Systems versus culture

Our district takes a lot of pride in pursuing a “systems approach” to management. Part of “systems thinking” is trying to understand and address the larger systemic forces that drive day-to-day reality in the schools. For example, if we’re concerned about incidents of racial prejudice or bias in the schools, the district shouldn’t just wait for incidents to happen and then react to them one by one; it should consider instituting professional development on the topic, incorporating it into school improvement plans and administrative performance reviews, setting explicit goals and then scheduling follow-up sessions to review progress, etc. The district’s strategic plan incorporates systematic approaches of that kind in a number of ways.

Systems thinking of that kind makes a lot of sense. But while it may be necessary, I doubt that it’s sufficient, because culture matters too. Even the most planful systems will struggle to be effective if the organization has a culture of minimizing or denying problems, reacting defensively to criticism, treating disagreement like sedition or insubordination, or viewing every problem through the lens of image and public relations.

To me, this is a major issue raised by the determinations, this year and last, that our district was not complying with special education laws. Why did our systems—the goal setting, the data collection, the accountability reviews, the “three-hundred-sixty-degree” superintendent evaluations, the staff training, etc.—fail to catch these problems, even though parents of special education students had been raising concerns for years? How is it that the problems went unaddressed until outside authorities intervened? How long would they have continued otherwise?

The issue of the district’s use of seclusion is a case in point. The task force on the issue made many good recommendations about adopting policies and practices designed to minimize the use of seclusion. Yet many people are still unsatisfied. This can manifest as an argument over whether seclusion should be completely abolished, even in last-resort situations when physical safety is at stake and physical restraint may be the only alternative. But I wonder if the root problem is about confidence in the district’s follow-through on any new set of policies and procedures.

Organizational change takes time, but “be patient—we’re instituting a new system!” will reassure people only if they have enough confidence that the organizational culture won’t stymie real change.

To build that kind of public confidence, what I wish for our district is a culture that welcomes criticism from both within and outside the institution (even when it’s not expressed perfectly); one that is receptive to public input without trying to manage or steer it toward a preferred outcome; one that values critical self-examination and a willingness to candidly admit error when it happens. (Those qualities are by no means completely absent from our district, but the district could more consistently exhibit them.) A simple, unadorned apology—including, for example, directly to kids who have been wrongly secluded—would go a long way toward rebuilding public confidence after the district has fallen short. Everyone knows that a large, human organization will never be infallible, but the response makes a difference.

How to create meaningful change in a large, bureaucratic institution—especially in its culture—is an eternal riddle. Nearing the end of my time on the school board, I don’t feel a whole lot closer to understanding the answer than I was at the beginning. (The late, great Writers’ Workshop professor Jim McPherson taught us that writing a novel might be at least as effective in changing the world as running for office could be—another take on the question of systems versus culture.) What are your thoughts on how to make it happen?

Board refuses to revisit illegal policy

At tonight’s meeting, I moved to add an item to our next meeting agenda to consider repealing Board Governance Policy 3d(2)(c)—the district policy that prohibits board members from expressing “individual negative judgments” about the superintendent. For reasons I discuss more fully here, this policy is plainly an unconstitutional restriction on speech. Three board members (Chris Lynch, Brian Kirschling, and LaTasha DeLoach) of the six present were against even discussing the issue, so the motion to put it on the agenda failed.

The policy is an embarrassment to the district. It is also yet another legal compliance issue. It also serves to chill speech on legitimate subjects of public debate—the kind of speech that is a necessary ingredient of good decision-making. What is the objection to discussing its repeal?

School board agenda for July 11

Very light agenda tonight. Two major items: First, the board will address the Hoover petition. The district’s attorney has posted another opinion about the issue, raising more objections to the petition. My initial post on the topic is here; the additional opinion from the district’s lawyer does not address the cases, Attorney General opinions, or legislative history records that I raised in that post.

Second, we’ll start the process of preparing for the vacancy in the seat of my fellow board member, LaTasha DeLoach, who is resigning from the board at the end of this week. State law says that the school board “shall” fill a vacancy by appointment, so I expect the board to at least make an effort to agree on an appointment. However, an appointment would last only until the next regular school board election, which is on this coming September 12. At that time, there will be an election to fill the seat for the remaining two years of DeLoach’s term.

(So there will now be four seats up for election in September. Candidates will have to choose whether to run for a four-year term or a two-year term. Of those running for four-year terms, the top three vote-getters will be elected. Voters will vote separately to elect one candidate to the two-year term.)

The full agenda is here. Please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.

Is the Hoover petition legally valid?

This week the board received a legal opinion from the district’s lawyer about the petition to put the demolition of Hoover Elementary on the ballot. This purpose of this post is to discuss the issue, summarize the opinion we received from the district’s lawyer, and explain why I think the issue needs more consideration.

Too-long-didn’t-read version: A close look at the legislative history of the relevant statutes shows that voters can validly petition to put the demolition of a school building onto the ballot. Moreover, the contrary interpretation would apply not just to voter petitions but also to school board decisions, leading to the (absurd) conclusion that no one—not even a school board—has the power to demolish a school building. So I think the district should take a second look at the statutes in light of their legislative history. Now here’s the long version:

The statutes

There are two key Iowa statutes that enable school districts to dispose of school property. For ease of reference, I’ll call them the “Petition Statute” and the “Board Statute.” The Petition Statute gives the voters the power to “direct the sale, lease, or other disposition of any schoolhouse” or other district property, via a petition process to put such an issue on the ballot. The Board Statute gives school boards the power to “sell, lease, or otherwise dispose of a schoolhouse” or other district property, and provides a procedure for doing so. The Hoover petition raises the issue of whether “disposing of” property under these statutes can include demolition.

To interpret the language of these statutes, it’s useful to know their history. Originally, the Petition Statute was the exclusive way for school districts to sell, lease, or dispose of property. (See this case at page 581 and this case at page 260.) This proved cumbersome, so the legislature passed the Board Statute, enabling school boards to dispose of school property without an election. An accompanying statute provided that the board’s power was “independent of” and “additional to” the voters’ power under the Petition Statute.

The co-existence of these two statutes inevitably raised questions. In 1979, the Iowa Attorney General’s Office stated in a formal opinion that the Petition Statute grants “a much broader and more flexible power which resides in the electors of the school district than that held by the board of directors. The policy behind the distinction is the fundamental democratic principle that the electors are entitled to hold more power,” and that the board’s power under the Board Statute was “much more restricted.” As a result, the opinion concluded that when the district sold a schoolhouse under the Board Statute, it faced restrictions on the use of the proceeds that it would not face under the Petition Statute.

The Decorah case

In 2007, another issue arose about the relationship between the two statutes. What if a school board voted to demolish a building, and then the voters filed a petition to lease that same building? The court in that case held that the voter petition was valid and that the election had to go forward, even though the school board had already voted to demolish the building.

School board agenda for June 27

Some of the items on the board’s agenda this week:

We’ll discuss issues raised by the petition to put the demolition of Hoover Elementary onto the school board election ballot. (See this post.)

We’ll hear a report about the district’s community education program.

We’ll hear recommendations from the task force to develop a plan to support families affected by immigration enforcement.

We’ll hear on update on voluntary transfers. (Previous posts on voluntary transfers are here.)

We’ll hear an update on the district’s Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Plan. (Info here.)

We’ll hear an update on the renovation of the Shimek playground. (Info here.) Our work session on this topic last month was inconclusive, but there was majority support for looking for ways to make the new playground as accessible and inclusive as possible. (See minutes here.)

All that and more! The full agenda is here. Please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.

Let the public vote on whether to tear down Hoover Elementary

The Save Hoover group is trying to get the issue of the demolition of Hoover Elementary School put on the ballot. The Press-Citizen has a good article about it. The district’s current plan, of course, is to tear down the building after the 2018-19 school year. The group hopes to place the issue on the September 12 school board election ballot and persuade people to vote No on it. The Q&A on the Save Hoover website gives a more detailed explanation of the petition effort.

I support the group’s efforts to get a public vote on the demolition of Hoover. There is a long list of reasons why the district’s plans for Hoover are bad policy. But the biggest problem for me has always been that the decision lacked the public support that such a major decision ought to have. I hope people will vote No on the issue, but if the voters do vote to tear the school down, I’ll be the first to say that the campaign to save Hoover is over and that people should move on. Without a public vote, though, the Hoover decision will always feel like it has been imposed by a small group without the support of the broader district community.

Disposing of a multi-million-dollar piece of property is a big deal, which is why there’s a state statute allowing people to petition for a public vote on it. The signature requirement is pretty high, though—roughly fifty percent higher than the requirement that applies to the district’s bond proposal. If you’d like to help get the question on the ballot, please print out the petition, fill out the information, and mail it in to:

Save Hoover Committee
P.O. Box 1653
Iowa City, IA 52240-1653

(There is no way to sign electronically.) The deadline for the group to submit signatures is June 29, so the sooner you mail it in, the better. Every little bit helps.

School board agenda for Tuesday, June 13

I’m late posting this week because I was on the road. Some of the topics on the board’s agenda tonight:

We’ll meet in an exempt (non-public) session to discuss the renewal and extension of the superintendent’s contract, as well as any possible changes in the contract language. This meeting is one step in the annual cycle of reviewing the superintendent’s contract. (More information on that process here.)

At our board meeting, we’ll discuss the report of the task force considering the district’s use of seclusion enclosures. (See posts here and here.) Two weeks ago, the state Department of Education issued a decision on a complaint about the district’s use of those enclosures; the task force apparently completed its report before that decision was issued.  News coverage of the state’s decision is here. Additional information on the use of seclusion enclosures is here.

We’ll also vote on whether to reapprove (and possibly amend) some of the district’s policies, including policies on good conduct, corporal punishment, student records access, the responsibilities of the superintendent, and on community comment at board meetings. This review is part of a scheduled cycle of policy reviews.

At our work session, we’ll discuss setting the district’s legislative priorities for next year.

We’ll also review a report from the administration’s transportation committee about busing in the district. The committee makes recommendations that include (1) increasing “attendance support” transportation at the elementary level, and (2) adding morning and evening activities busing at Northwest and North Central junior highs. One controversial point is the lack of any activities busing recommendation at the high school level for students in the Kirkwood neighborhood, who are now assigned to Liberty High, which cannot be reached from that neighborhood by public transportation. Related information here.

We’ll discuss the possibility of supporting a Future Farmers of America chapter in the district.

As usual, our work session also includes agenda items for the district’s bond proposal and facilities master plan.

All that and more! The full agendas are here and here. Please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.

Where are we likely to exceed our enrollment projections?

Too-long-didn’t-read version: The bond proposal would build hundreds more seats than our enrollment projections tell us we’ll need even ten years from now. It’s true that our enrollment projections are very likely underestimating growth in the North Corridor—but that’s not where we’re putting most of those “extra” seats.

As I wrote about here, one of the reasons I’m not in favor of the district’s bond proposal is that it would build 1,896 more seats than our enrollment projections show that we’ll need even ten years from now. Is it possible that our projections are not fully capturing the amount of population growth that will occur? Yes; in fact, I think it’s likely in some areas. The problem, though, is that those aren’t the areas where we’re building most of those “extra” seats.

One way to judge whether the enrollment projections are capturing growth is to compare them to the “age progression” data we received last year. Age progressions show what the enrollment would be if we just kept moving our current students forward each year. In other words, they show what the enrollment would be if no one moves in and no one moves out; they show what the enrollment would be with zero growth.

In some parts of the district, the projections show more students than the age progressions show; this means they’re predicting some growth in those areas. For example, compare the age progressions to the enrollment projections for City High:

Similarly, though to a somewhat lesser extent, the projections show growth at West High:

At Liberty High, though, the enrollment projections are actually lower than the age progressions:

This aspect of the enrollment projections is striking and very hard to explain. North Liberty is one of the fastest growing cities in Iowa, and there are hundreds of housing units planned for the area around Liberty High in both North Liberty and Coralville. It’s very hard to understand how we could end up with fewer students at Liberty than even the zero-growth age progressions would predict.

In other words, our projections appear to be recognizing likely growth in Iowa City, but missing it in the North Corridor. So, if anything, you’d think our plans should track the projections in Iowa City, but exceed them in the Corridor. But the bond proposal exceeds them in Iowa City way more than it does in the Corridor. The proposal would build 1,388 more elementary seats than the enrollment projections show we’ll need, but 728 of those “excess” seats are in the City High zone, where it appears that the enrollment projections are already capturing a fair amount of growth. Only 166 of them are in the Liberty zone, where the projections seem not to be capturing any growth at all.

Maybe the growth patterns will surprise us. Enrollment projections are inherently speculative, especially when they reach many years out. In my view, that’s a good reason not to make plans that extend seven years out from the time of bond passage. But at the very least, the district should be trying to build its new capacity in the areas where it expects the growth to occur. Under that standard, the bond proposal is very hard to defend.

__________

A note on sources: The enrollment projections are here; see in particular pages 89, 91, and 93. The planned capacity figures are from Column O here, aggregating the elementaries into high school zones using the district’s feeder system. The high school age progressions are here. We were given age progressions for several different boundary scenarios; the ones that represent the boundaries that were ultimately approved are the ones labeled “City High School - 2015-16 students age progressed,” “West High School - 2015-16 students age progressed with Kirkwood ES moved to LHS,” and “Liberty High School - 2015-16 students age progressed with Kirkwood ES added to LHS.”

School board agenda for May 23

Busy week on the school board agenda. Among other things:

We’ll hear an update on the annual student climate survey, including comparisons to last year’s results. More information here.

We’ll review the report of the School Improvement Advisory Committee.

We’ll get a safety update from the facilities department.

At our work session, we’ll get an update on the district’s proposed contracts with the providers of our before-and-after-school programs. (Information here; see also this post.)

We’ll review the status of the Shimek playground project. The board approved the project in March, but there are still concerns about whether the planned playground is sufficiently accessible to students with disabilities. (More information here; see also this post.)

We’ll get an update on busing plans and costs from our transportation committee.

We’ll continue to discuss the district’s bond proposal and facilities plan, including its building capacity and enrollment projections.

All that and more! The full agendas are here and here. Please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.

One editorial comment: When I’m no longer on the school board, I won’t miss reading this kind of prose. Readers, can any of you tell what this company is going to do for the district?

What will go on the Hoover property?

It’s now been almost four years since the school board voted to close and tear down Hoover Elementary School. The demolition of the building is only about two years away. The district is about to ask voters for $191 million to pursue its facilities plan. Shouldn’t the district be able to tell the public what will happen on the Hoover property after the school is torn down?

Many Hoover neighbors are (very reasonably) worried that the site will become a parking lot for City High. So last week, I asked the superintendent:

Does the district have a plan for what will go on the Hoover property if the school is closed as planned?

His reply:

We have not done any concept work on the CHS campus yet so we do not have an answer to this question at this time.

I then asked:

Are there any plans to do that concept work before the bond referendum?

His reply:

The Business and Facilities office responded:
-The city high project is not scheduled to begin until 2019
-We currently do not have a design team in place for this project
-It would take several weeks / months and meetings to get a design team up to speed on this size of project
-The upfront design costs will be large for this project
-This is a bond funded project but we do not have access to those funds prior to the first bond sale after the vote
-To keep the FMP moving as it is we are already planning to put design teams in place for Mann, Lincoln, and the new elementary building yet this summer
-To fund these project designs prior to the vote we are holding back on PPEL life cycle implementation during the summer
-Should the bond pass we would “reimburse” the PPEL fund from the bond proceeds
-Should the bond fail we would have these design costs left in PPEL.
-We cannot afford to have City High design concept costs in PPEL at this time

The district is essentially saying to voters: First give us the $191 million, then we’ll tell you what will happen on the Hoover property.

The district is working very hard to promote its facilities plan before the bond vote. It now has separate web pages for each school in the facilities plan, describing the work that’s already been done and the future projects. If the district thought its future use of the Hoover property would be popular with the public, are those the answers it would give?