In response to the July 7 Gazette editorial, the reasoning that we should have a storefront library on the north end escapes me. It says this is so that the north-end residents won't need to travel across the city to borrow their favourite books, movies and music from the library, which is situated in St. Albert Place. Those who can’t afford a home computer or don’t have internet hookup also make the trek downtown to use the computers that are set up on the library’s second floor – a free, and popular, service available to its members.
Has any one calculated how much this will cost each of us per year in taxes to build this at $517,000 with an annual operating cost of $382,300 by 2020? And we all know it will really be more than that. The average annual increase in operating costs from 2000 to 2016 was 8.45 per cent for the existing library. The formula for calculating our municipal taxes at our current population is one percent increase for every new $850,000 expenditure. So for those who don’t like math, if you are paying $4,000/year in property taxes, that will be about $40 more each year on your taxes for a storefront library and you will still have to go across town for other services. In the spring of 2017, I sent a more detailed calculation to the editor of what our tax increase would be if the proposed new library was built but it was not printed.
Is borrowing a book an essential service? How do those poor country folks manage? I live on the north end and like the rest of us I sit at several non-sequenced red lights every day. Maybe the extra staff needed to man the storefront library could do a study on how to sequence the traffic lights. Then we could all get across the city faster and keep those deadly greenhouse gases from idling at red lights at bay.
Sufficient pool space for the kids to learn how to swim is not an essential service either, but it could be a matter of life and death and it was the top choice on the plebiscite.
How much would it cost to have the book van go to various locations on a regular schedule to various locations in St. Albert? The increase in taxes for those without computers would pay their gas to do all their errands downtown for a year or they could save up for a new computer that they can have in their homes 24/7.
I think this push for another library is more about job security for unelected library staff whose chosen profession is becoming obsolete. The flack I’m going to get if this gets into the Gazette should be good for readership.
Reta Thompson, St. Albert
