I ran into Mayor Bob Duffy yesterday on my way into City Hall. I was there, coincidentally, to meet with Duffy.

The mayor had just come from his car, where he was listening to Bob Smith on WXXI. The program was about mayoral control of the city schools. School Board members Van Henri White and Tom Brennan were two of Smith's guests.

The response from callers, mostly favoring mayoral control, tickled Duffy. A public dialog is under way even though it is not something he directly initiated. About a week ago, Duffy said he was going to study mayoral control and state his position. This is what he had to say about it in our meeting:

To imply that I have lobbied openly or behind the scenes is flat-out not true. I don't care about the issue of control. I care about results. I am not married to mayoral control...

There have been from what I have read some successes with mayoral control. I am more interested in coming to an agreement on a process that is systemic. I may have a disagreement with one or two of the School Board members, but I realize that we could have a situation where a mayor in the future could use the school district for political patronage...

One option would be to change the state law to allow School Board members to levy property taxes, and then be held accountable for the use of that taxpayer money. It is my belief now that not enough people pay close enough attention to these elections because the issues of taxes and taxation come back to this office in City Hall...

Most people don't realize that we levy and turn over more than 70 percent of our entire property taxes from the city over to the school district. Yet, we have no authority for decision-making at any level about that money. By and large, people were appalled when they realized that...

The discussion is political, and we have to find a way to take the politics out of it. Members of the School Board and the unions are concerned about having City Hall have any involvement with district finances. I have no idea why, but clearly that is a real source of tension...

Another option is leave it as is. Keep the tensions, the arguments going back and forth, and so on...

The third option is a little more radical. Given the fact that the school budget is about $700 million, and we contribute $119 million, the state really funds the rest. So, let the state take over full responsibility for the district. They can keep whatever governance they like. If the state had full financial responsibility, there would be no tension with City Hall over finances. I would be able to take some of that money and I could fill our budget gap. The rest I could return to taxpayers...

Duffy said that he hopes the graduation rate is moving upward as suggested by School Board member White, but the public has reached a point of exasperation with the school district and there is suspicion about the numbers.