Many reasons to leave library where it is

Dear Editor: A few thoughts on the proposed move of the Library to the second floor of the Gallagher: Several times the “safety issue” has been brought up. I’ve never had an issue at the present location but I am absolutely positive that if I was going to have any problems I would be infinitely safer at the present location than the Gallagher Centre.

1) It’s only 50 feet from the parking lot at the present location, I’m pretty sure I could holler, shriek or make enough noise that the staff would hear me.

2) Even if not, there is so much traffic, both foot and vehicles, that it’s almost certain someone would note a scuffle.

3) Neither is true at the Gallagher where staff is at the very least several hundred feet away in a noisy echo chamber, the main paved area is invisible from Broadway and there is no foot traffic. It could be hours before anyone knew I’d had a problem.

4) It would be little effort on the part of the RCMP to drive through the present parking lot, or even by it a bit more frequently than at present. If indeed the issues are with people involved with drugs, it’s a surprise the RCMP is waiting to be asked. The Gallagher is out of the way for them as for everyone else.

5) Moving to the Gallagher would only be successful in the unlikely event that none of the troublemakers would follow the library. Experience suggests that people intent on making trouble follow people they see as potential victims. So like every other rationale offered by council it seems misinformed wishful thinking.

At the meeting there was a fine confusion regarding the value of the building. SAMA says it’s worth around $2.5 million (assessment), the agreed sale price is apparently $1.5 million or a million dollars less. Council offered the information that SAMA was wrong, the assessment was outdated and incorrect and doesn’t apply to commercial buildings anyway. They said recently done assessments (no mention of by whom or when or exactly what their assessment was) made the offer of 1.5 million more accurate, and business decrees when someone wants to buy you sell and when someone wants to sell you buy. Well another axiom is act in haste and regret at leisure.

If SAMA assessment was so far out of sync with reality why was the assessment not appealed? If it was so long ago it no longer is apt, might it not now be that value? Real estate prices have not gone down over the past few years, rather the opposite.

Several people at the meeting mentioned the haste and furtiveness of this whole affair. Somewhat modified by the public hearing, almost nobody knew about it. Virtually everyone there had heard only by word of mouth and was unanimously opposed to the sale. It all does not add up to an atmosphere of trust.

As opposed to both the Canadian Charter of Rights and the Sask Government published Human Rights guidelines, it takes a service which is very accessible and moves it to a space which is decidedly unfriendly/difficult for anyone with difficulties ranging from mobility to vision, hearing or orientation issues. The parking lot is hundreds of feet further just to get to the elevator. People without cars will not be going to the Gallagher library and many who have cars will find it too cumbersome. Another tenet of business is location-location-location.

In those terms a second floor Gallagher library is a decided no.

That brings up the time factor. Right now a person can swing into the parking lot, get into the library and drop off books, catch up on emails on the computer, check out a book and be out and on their way in the time it will take just to get to the proposed new library location.

This appears to be a decision made from privilege. Only two of council admitted to ever using the library. So it appears because they may have 24/7 access to the internet and can afford to buy books and they have been in Yorkton long enough that they have a large social circle, they assume everyone else has those things too, and the library is therefore a dismissable whimsey. This is not the case. For any of those things and more.

The Provincial government suggests that 10,000 sq. feet is appropriate for a library in a city the size of Yorkton. So the present library is considerably more than that.

But it is all used.

None of it is idle space. But council thinks that it’s too much so should be shoehorned into a space that is well BELOW provincial guidelines. This is like throwing the Mona Lisa out because it doesn’t fit in the artificial criteria some bureaucrats have settled on. The Yorkton Library is a testament where it is of the forward thinking of previous councils and the dedicated hard working staff who serve thousands of visitors from slightly frazzled young moms to slightly feeble seniors and young adults looking for a place to study, do research and visit with friends ... and just maybe, have a ref- uge where they can go to get away from troublemakers.

This decision seems to be about the vision council has for Yorkton. Does it stay small town determined that even complicated questions have simple answers and that anyone who doesn’t have what they want/ need probably doesn’t actually deserve or need it? Or does it become a city which caters to all sorts of people because if people have the resources they need they can progress?

If ‘fiscal responsibility’ is the rallying cry, perhaps council can explain why, last summer, after York Road was torn up for water main repair, the road had its potholes and broken pavement carefully replaced so that this summer they could tear it all up again and repair it. One would hope there was a good reason for this but it certainly isn’t obvious. Yet they are willing to gut one of the better libraries in Saskatchewan.

It’s a shame the some council members can’t appreciate what we have in the blind rush to fill an empty space, no matter how inappropriately, and discard one of the best things Yorkton has going for it. Cities around the globe boast of the libraries, museums, art galleries. Not one, anywhere, has boasted about having an inadequate or no library. Ever.

Pamela O’Neill, Yorkton