The Aberdeen City Council has set December 15 as the day for Aberdonians to vote on the bond financing for the new public library. The special election will cost a bit over $12,000, less than a buck a voter (and you voters had better show up this time!).
With the Ramada now closed (all of its furnishings go on sale tomorrow, and the building will apparently be demolished), Brown County auditor Maxine Fischer has arranged for the even less accessible AmericInn east of the mall out back of Menards to serve as a voting center along with the Ramkota on the west edge of town and the courthouse downtown. That makes two voting centers out of three to which there is no safe, dedicated pedestrian access. (Try getting to the Ramkota on foot: there is no marked crosswalk across 281, and the strange oblique angle of that intersection dangerously lengthens foot crossing time.)
My blog neighbor Ken Santema opposes building a new library. He calls the proposed new building a “vanity project” filled with unnecessary meeting space and aesthetic frills that don’t meet the core informational mission of the public library. I contend that aesthetics have quite a bit to do with the mission of a library. People don’t leave their homes to go sit in a dark cell with a book and a candle. “Big beautiful windows”—also known as natural lighting—and other healthy design elements make a space more conducive to study and recreational reading. Meeting space is a natural extension of the informational mission of a library: citizens come to the library to learn from books, from computers, and from each other.
Another Brown County neighbor, Bill Welk, has been peppering the local paper with ads presenting semi-coherent rants against the library and city government. One of his more tantalizing arguments was that the city would forfeit the current library land if it moved our books to a new facility, since the original donor of the library lot required that the land be used for nothing but a library (like the original deed requirement that the Dakota State University campus in Madison revert to heirs of 1880s donor Charles B. Kennedy if the state ever stopped offering a teacher education program there). Elisa Sand put that misunderstanding to rest last week:
James A. Milligan donated the lot for the public library. According to a 1959 report in the Aberdeen American News, when Milligan donated the land, the library was in the upper levels of two Main Street businesses, and city officials were discussing the construction of a new library.
According to the deed, Milligan’s property was donated for the sole purpose of building a new library within 10 years. If no library was built, the property would have reverted back to the family, according to the deed, which also said that once the library was built, the restriction was voided.
In other words, the piece of property doesn’t have to be a city library for eternity.
The Alexander Mitchell Public Library was built in 1963, wiping out the deed’s stipulation [Elisa Sand, “Deed Restrictions on Aberdeen Library No Longer in Force,” Aberdeen American News, 2015.10.21].
Folks using lies to sway elections generally trigger my oppositional defiance (don’t call it a disorder!) and make me want to vote the other way all the more. I am pleased the city has given me the chance to vote that way before Christmas. I look forward to several thousand of you joining me to vote the same way on December 15!
Omg you talked about Billy Welk… Best be careful! ;)
…or like the reversionary language in the 1200 acres of Indian Boarding School land covering luxurious west Rapid City. after 1933 the land was no longer used “for the benefit of the Indian people” (or words to that effect) and was instead divvied up between churches, developers, the nat’l guard and however else talked nice to the city fathers to get some free land.
Some little Indian ladies kept making noise against it until the 80s and 90s at least, but the mayor had already encouraged the congressional delegation in the late 50s to pass a bill taking that land too.
Naw, white privilege doesn’t exist, most say around here. cripes!
Over the years I have attended, participated in, and moderated a number of book-related programs at the library, and have used it frequently for myself and students in our work. I have also seen its work curtailed by leaks and water damage from the top and bottom. The city does need to improve its facility for supporting the literate activities in the community. But Ken Santema has a point in suggesting that the proposed plan seems to place more emphasis on the social rather the literate, informing aspect of the library. The questions of maintaining and building the information base of the library get dismissed.
I have pointed out that the South Dakota Library Network was a tremendous resource in that it made it possible to have access to a huge catalog of works by having public libraries throughout the state coordinate and share in the storage of materials that one library could not afford or have room to shelve. The Regents have withdrawn that program and limit it to only the university libraries. The question of replacing that access to materials has not been answered in terms of whether replacement cataloging arrangements replace that extensive network of inter-library loan. Many digital sources of materials are putting up paywalls that get prohibitively expensive.
Criticisms from people like Ken Santema question the library as a “vanity project,”l and that question is raised by the proponents of the new library who have a poster in circulation that announces “Beyond books.” It is good to have a facility that supports activities that center on obtaining and exchanging informing materials, but the the attitude and words of the proponents seem to underscore the issues raised by some opponents.
Mrs. Nelson, tell me more about Mr. Welk.
David, I will be interested to see how those words and attitudes play out. One proponent I spoke with sounded remarkably vehement against even having the vote, which I think is a reasonable way to gauge what the public really wants.
Does the new online system the library has adopted restore the online resources we lost with the state’s gutting of its online library network?
Isn’t there a bike path that goes right by the Americ INN.