Jennifer Smith

Photo by Graham Paine

Tuesday's Champion has front page coverage of last week's all-candidates meeting on seniors issues, and the Bruce Street Library is the top issue mentioned.

I'm not sure that the article quite conveyed my tone when I said I was "very pleased" that current councillors are now supporting Bruce Street as a branch library. Because by "very pleased", what I really meant was "surprised and disgusted" that they would suddenly want to reverse a decision that they themselves made simply because they're trying to get re-elected.

Please see my previous post for a timeline of all the opportunities my opponents had to speak out against the closure of this library and failed to do so over the past three years. Sorry isn't good enough.

I have been on record from day one that the Bruce Street Library should remain open as a branch, and I have consistently held our current local councillors to account for both their decision to close it and for their failure to inform their constituents. If I had not, they wouldn't have even bothered mentioning it at that meeting.

Keep all that in mind when you cast your ballot on October 25th.

_______________________________

UPDATE: Andrew Salmons made the claim at that debate that keeping the Bruce Street Library open would result in a 7% tax increase. I like Andrew very much, but in this case he is simply wrong. I questioned him on this and he is basing his figures on the cost of Bruce Street continuing to operate as the Main Library, which nobody is suggesting.

Assuming that Bruce Street would operate as a Branch Library with similar costs to the existing Beaty Branch, we`re looking at approximately $890,000 a year which is about 3% of the 2010 Town tax levy, not 7%. And with downsizing, leasing out the auxiliary administrative building, renting out space to community groups, plus projected assessment growth after the new library opens, it would almost certainly be considerably less.

One question that obviously needs to be asked is, if our current councillors are so committed to this, why hasn't one of them asked Town staff to sort out exactly what a Bruce Street Branch would cost to operate?