Ruth Holliday directs attention to a recent report that the Marion County Public Library is giving serious consideration to dumping six branch libraries, as their tax receipts are way down, and wonders if they'd be facing as large a shortfall had they not decreed the stately pleasure dome, er, zillion-dollar rebuild of the Central Library.
Good question, especially considering the cost overrun and construction quality shortfalls of that project, not to mention the $750K (FOB) cost of the frightening public art in front of the place -- and all that, for a project that ripped out the venerable stacks and replaced them with an "open-plan" space that minimizes the (presumably horrifying) impact of all...those..books.
Aha! That's it -- they're savin' the kids in residential neighborhoods from the terror of havin' to go confront books and reading and all that awful stuff. It's so old-school. I wonder if the remaining vestige of the local library will rent video games online? Hey, it might even earn enough to keep another branch library open. Or buy some more self-important schlock art instead, prolly.
My tax dollars. At work?
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
5 comments:
They destroyed Central Library. They ripped out its guts and killed it.
I've not been back there since The Great Rebuilding, and don't see myself darkening their doors anytime the rest of my life.
Are you sure this isn't Seattle? 'Cuz those bozo did exactly the same thing, with exactly the same outcome!
Our local library (supporting a standalone town of 20,000) along with various matching funds did a major renovation of the Fort Piqua Hotel. The building went from being an empty eyesore to beautiful. But that's not really the purpose of a library, and they are having financial problems as a result.
Roberta,
I followed the links to check out the "art" you referenced... Absolutely hideous!
If only I had become an artist. I could then foist any manner of grotesque crap, that I vaguely remembered as a snippit of a nightmare experienced in some tequila induced stupor, onto a group of bourgeois city officials pretending to be art afficionados, and make huge sums of money from it.
Heh. You said "schlock". A fave of mine to describe just that sort of thing!
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