Children's Room at Salem Public Library held hostage to police facility

This should be a crime: holding remodeling of the Salem Public Library's Children's Room hostage to a crazy plan to convert the entire library into a police facility while putting the library... somewhere else.

Or maybe City officals will conclude Salem just doesn't need a central library. 

Crime or not, it's happening. 

City Manager Linda Norris and her co-conspirators at City Hall have told the library administrator that the planned $250,000 worth of renovations to the Children's Room -- paid for from privately-raised funds -- has to be put on hold pending the outcome of City Council deliberations about whether to turn the Salem Public Library into a police facility.

Yesterday I talked with a woman who is a member of library and police advisory committees. She also is a mother of two young children. She's aghast at what City officials are doing. More: really, really angry. 

As she should be. 

I was told that currently it is common for 100 people to take part in the Storytime sessions at the current overcrowded Children's Room. Elementary school field trips to the library can only happen on one day, when the regular Storytime isn't happening in the Children's Room.

The remodeling, which was all ready to go before City Manager Norris put up a stop sign, would add another Storytime room -- thereby allowing school field trips to come on any day of the week.

This person felt that City officials are trying to kill Storytime by leaving the Children's Room so crowded with 80, 90, or even 100 people in the room, that children and parents won't come back. Then City staff can say, "Look, fewer people are using the library; so let's convert the Children's Room into holding cells."

Outrageous. A word that is being used increasingly often to describe City Hall goings-on. For sure, not just by me. 

Think about it: the City of Salem has never had a public hearing of any sort about the plan to convert the Salem Public Library into a police facility. I reported on this nine days ago, but I'm pretty sure the Statesman Journal, our so-called "paper of record" hasn't done a story on the notion so far.

So once again, secretive back-room deal making is the modus operandi for Mayor Peterson, City Manager Norris, and the City Council. But this is an especially outrageous outrage.

Geez... stopping renovations to the Children's Room from going forward because it would look bad if these much-needed improvements are ripped out when the entire Salem Public Library is evicted from its building and forced to move elsewhere -- heartless.

Plus, I was told that City officials have been regularly raiding the library budget to pay for other city services. 

This is tragic.

But just as with the needless U.S. Bank tree killings, there is a certain tragicomic feel to what the City of Salem is doing this time. Adding the "comic" doesn't make the outrageous actions of Norris, Peterson, et. al. any less so. It just illustrates how farcical this new episode in "City Officials Gone Wild" is. 

See my post, "Salem's US Bank tree cutting needs to be featured on The Daily Show."

Maybe it makes sense to have a two-subject Daily Show special report now, the US Bank tree cutting and the Children's Room into holding cells (or whatever) proposal. 

I could see a bunch of children sitting on the floor, enjoying Storytime. Then a SWAT team bursts in, body armor on, brandishing batons. "Exit the room! Hands up!" they yell at the startled children, parents, and library staff. "The library is now a police facility, per order of the Salem City Council!"

The kids are escorted out; a tough-guy construction crew marches in. They start cutting up the Storytime posters, shelves, and books with chainsaws, demolishing the walls with sledgehammers. The pieces of a jail cell start to be assembled in what used to be the Children's Room.

Funny? Yeah, sure could be. However, this is no joke. It really is what City officials are seriously considering, albeit in a less dramatic fashion than my Daily Show bit.

Tell them, no way. I've been told that Councilor Bednarz is especially big on converting the library into a police facility. You might want to give him an especially large piece of your mind.
mailto:[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]

Let the Children's Room remodeling go forward. Storytime shouldn't be held hostage to a crazy idea of making the Salem Public Library into a police facility that easily could be built elsewhere for much less money.

This is no joke. The City is really, truly set on a course where the library could be converted into a police facility. Here's what city staffer Courtney Knox Busch said in an email message recently:

May 27, 2014 Update: Police Facility, Civic Center Seismic

City Council held a Work Session on May 21, 2014 to discuss the need for a new Police facility and seismic strengthening of the Civic Center buildings, including the Main Branch of the Salem Public Library. 

The Work Session gave Council an opportunity to talk to one another and staff a better understanding of information Council would like to see to inform decisions for next steps.  While no decisions can be made in a work session setting, several Councilors raised ideas for possible locations for a new Police Facility, including City-owned facilities like the Library.  To further explore this possibility, Council requested information concerning:

1)  whether the Library could be reconfigured to meet the Police Department’s needs and at what cost and

2)  what City-owned properties are available (e.g. Marion Parkade, leased properties downtown, Windows to the West) that might work for a new Police or Library facility.

Staff anticipates returning to Council in late June with a report on what it would take (staff time, schedule and cost) to provide the requested information.  At that point, Council will review the schedule and determine if the costs are an appropriate investment.

You are receiving this email because you've indicated an interest in this topic.  If you no longer wish to receive these email updates, please email [email protected] to be removed from the list.

Thank you.

Courtney

Comments

[Mary Ann Baclawski]

One minor correction to your story- our city library has *no* director. The director was fired several years ago. I don't recall B.J.'s title, but it is not director. She basically performs the same job but missing the top decision making capability which now resides in city hall and with a smaller salary than the fired director.

There are good reasons to build a new library. The current building is ugly, unsafe and was never well designed. Library services are currently undergoing great evolution. But *I do not trust our city government to improve library services in a new building rather than eviscerate them further*.

5 day bus service, 5 or 6 day library service (or part of a day in West Salem), is it any wonder our part-time city isn't thriving?

[Brian Hines]

Mary Ann, thanks for the correction. A Statesman Journal story calls Towe the "library administrator." I'll change her title to that.

Regarding a new library, I also worry about whether this would be better than the old one.

City officials are under a lot of pressure to reduce the cost of the $85 million (or higher) current cost for a new police facility and Civic Center renovations -- including seismic retrofitting of City Hall and the Library.

"Back of the envelope" calculations seem to show that building a new library and converting the current library to a police facility would save little, if any, money. Again, this is just a rough guesstimate.

But it makes sense. After all, currently we have a functional library and a poor police facility crammed into the bottom floor of the Civic Center. Doesn't seem real smart or cost-effective to convert the functional library into a police facility and then look for a new library location.

[Xue Lor]

I knew a while back that if the City manager, the mayor and the police chief doesn't want to relocate the police station to another location that they would move the library and make it the new police station. That was pretty obvious. It is sad to see our city government not being upfront about it to the people. This was one of the reasons why I ran for the city council position. The public need to be informed. Xue Lor

[Katie Ernst]

That is a nice little rant but it leaves a lot of questions. My 3 y/o and I go at least once a week and the only place that IS crowded is the kids area. We DO NOT use the story time area because it is HOT and packed and stinks in there. BUT.....
If you walk through the main areas there may be one or two students studying but I mostly see homeless looking men just killing time.
Every school in the area already has a library that their kids can check out stuff so unless its summer time they are not going to the library. The "Heritage Room" is always empty when I walk by....If they replace that ONE glass wall with sound proofing then they could used that area for kids story. the teen room has only ever been open once when I walked through... they could use that for story area? Half the time the conference rooms appear empty...There is no need to use $250K to renovate when they don't even have enough volunteers to keep the playroom open when its supposed to be open.... there that's my rant.

[Curtis Gustafson]

Like an episode of Portlandia. The cops will start hanging out at the Library and like two weeks in they have checked out all the books. people get skuffled by in hand cuffs towards the childrens story time room. Nothing to see here! Move along! Librarians on paid leave.....

[L M Sullivan]

Ms. Ernst must frequent the off-hours. The library's children's area is routinely busy, story-time is packed and the programs are often full to capacity. And have you actually checked out your kids' school library? You won't find a bona fide librarian, and the book selection (if there is one) probably resembles a garage sale assortment of dated books.

I'd suggest moving the police facility to a new location. Few people actually go there, and all the police use cars. Leave the downtown location for culture!

[Casey]

I will say that there are alot more people outraged about the possible move than there are volunteers willing to make the library more functional.However,I would tend to agree that the downtown location should remain the location for library. For low income families or single vehicle families, sometimes the bus is the only way that they can get to the library. If we move the library it would make it harder for these families to provide some sort of enrichment for their children besides sitting in the house watching tv. I would also argue that if the library budget has been being raided for other projects already then my faith that they would put enough money into a new facility to make it functional, is pretty low. As for the 250,000 in renovations for the children's room, you will note that the article states that they were privately raised funds. Its not costing the tax payers anything to renovate this room, so why shouldn't they be able to spend the money to make it a more workable space. In a world where kids get stuck in front of the tv or video games, shouldn't this kind of project be where we invest? Our kids are growing up far to fast now days, maybe we should place some importance on preserving their childhoods and imagination and fostering a love of learning. Sad to see salem putting so little stake in that.