Comment on Editorial: Why spend $50 million on the “last library?” by Dave Morgan
Submitted by on Wed, 02/03/2010 - 11:00am
Ron: Valid points. Valid points. I’m more concerned about making a $50 million investment in a library while not knowing “where” information management is headed. A 20 year bond stretches over vast amounts of time during which change roars by us with new definitions for everything. I am 100% in full support of having a full-out Town Hall meeting, broadcast live on the internet from Comma Coffee, where all these concerns can come out. We need to be astute at planning ANY new building that will “allegedly” serve the community’s needs. That’s what we did before we built our new Sheriff’s Office, Jail and Courthouse complex. By being mindful of community needs, we saved a TON of money by launching full-boat investigations on trends, construction techniques and community need projections.
A healthy debate about a new library, apart from the “Nugget Project,” is very much needed. In my opinion, the fact that the proposal for a new library is entangled in the Nugget Project is a definite liability for the library. Many believe it’s a teaspoon of sugar to make the medicine go down on the Business Incubator, Digital Media Lab and high rise condos/offices/retail buildings. And there is growing support for a “take it slower” approach. They’re saying “if the library is so wonderful, let’s talk about a library. If a business incubator is wonderful, let’s talk about that, BUT NOT in the context of an $80 million “plus” dollar downtown complex.” While some say it’s the combined synergy of everything in the project that gives the town a shot at renewed prosperity, it also smacks of an approach that Nugget Team Leader Mark Lewis has pursued in several west coast cities. Residents in Stockton and Reno are now paying for redevelopment projects that were “too big to fail.” But failing they are. And now their taxpayers are paying through the nose for those “too big to fail” projects at the expense of other vitally necessary city and county services. We need to slow down. We need to be adults about this. The heretofore “rush to build crowd” has got to be put on the curb while cooler heads protect the town from what appears to be “insider trading” with Carson City’s future.
Getting back to the library qua library, assemble a group of well informed information managers, such as yourself, and let’s throw some sunshine on it. I think it would way wonderful to get all this out into the public square and let everyone wrap their minds around it.
- adults
- Buildings
- Buildings.
- Business
- carson
- City
- Coffee
- community
- Community,
- construction
- cooler
- county
- digital media
- downtown
- Healthy
- information
- internet
- live
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- money
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- New Library
- nugget
- nugget project
- Opinion
- opinion
- planning
- public
- Redevelopment
- Services
- Support
- talk
- Town Hall
- Town Hall Meeting
- Wonderful !
- Comma Coffee
- Incubator
- Library
- Mark Lewis
- Media Lab
- reno
