Craig Miller from Rogers asked the following questions about a new library > Why we had to get rid of the old DT library? > Can some one explain to me/fourm in 10 bullet points or less.
- It was completely unfunctional from a library design, with 90% of the books locked away from patrons. - It was costly to operate because of the number of staff who had to run around and get books, instead of helping patrons. - It was a giant building full of paper with no fire sprinkers and totally inadequate fire escape for patrons. The Fire Marshall was threatening to shut the building down without multi-million dollar fire improvements. - It needed a new roof, new HVAC, a new electrical system (it was built before computers) and a bunch of other things such that the cost of making the building functional from a basic mechanical perspective made tearing it down and building something new financially appropriate. - The old library was full. There was no place else to put new books. It was either start throwing out good books or build a larger building. > BTW if we don't build a new one and we have already bulldozed the old one, > we face these charges. > > 1. We don't need one. > 2. We didn't need one. > 3. Or we're paying too much rent when we should have kept the old one. > 4. The city voters, planners, admins and dreamers look like idiots. > What happens if a dramatically scaled down library gets built now? What was > all the fuss ($$$$$) about? There is no option of a "dramatically scaled down" library. Unless we decide that we don't need a children's section or maybe we don't need fiction books in Minneapolis any more? Sizing the library is pretty easy. You have X number of books. You are going to have Y growth in the number of books. That gives you Z, the size of the library. The only bits of the plan that could be considered discretionary are some meeting rooms and an auditorium (used by the 25,000 people who now live downtown in Minneapolis and have no park facilities for meeting in) and a coffee shop (which would subsequently pay rent). Everything else pretty much is books space. > How much money have we spent so far, with the possibility that we will build > a quonset hut? 12 years of planning. I don't have the exact amounts but in the tens of millions of dollars. Having a look at the library in Rogers, it would appear that you don't have a quonset hut. Minneapolis residents don't deserve one either, which is essentially what they will have. http://www.hclib.org/AgenciesAction.cfm?agency=rg Carol Becker Longfellow TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
