A just-released staff report for next Monday's City Council meeting thankfully throws a lot of cold water on the crazy notion that the Salem Public Library should be converted to a police facility, with the library moving to some other undisclosed location -- maybe the Marion Parkade parking garage.
Download Council Item 7a (6_23_14)
City Manager Linda Norris says in the informational memo:
According to the City's Chief Building Official, the challenges in taking an existing building, constructed earlier than the 1990's when building codes were updated to account for seismic risk, may make it cost prohibitive to reconstruct the Library facility for Police use. The cost of bringing this building to an immediate occupancy standard for the Salem Police Department is likely not economically feasible.
Great news.
Just what I've been saying (see here and here), echoing others who are deeply skeptical about decommissioning a functional library building and making it into a police facility -- since it makes a lot more sense to build a new police facility somewhere away from the Civic Center.
But this is important: Lovers of the library, and haters of wasteful government spending, still need to come to the City Council meeting on Monday, June 23.
Check out my "Save the Salem Public Library from being moved to a parking garage" post.
Taking a Machiavellian view of the City Manager's memo (always advisable when dealing with public officials), I suspect that the seismic upgrade cost issue is a face-saving way of retreating from a proposal that would meet with intense citizen opposition.
However, there's still a chance the City Council could decide to go ahead with a library conversion study.
So lovers of the library should come to the June 23 meeting. As Salem Community Vision says, speaking during the opening public comment period will help kill this bad idea. A silent presence also will send a message.
Also, if a new police facility isn't going to go into the library building, this opens the door to City officials bringing back an almost equally bad idea: building an over-priced three story police palace with expensive underground parking next to (and over) the Civic Center's Mirror Pond.
A new police facility should be built out in the community at much lower cost. And seismic upgrades need to be made to the library and city hall.
Less expensive ones, since the seismic safety standard for a Life Safety Performance Level is much less than an Immediate Occupancy Performance Level requred for a police facility. (See staff memo linked above.)
Thus this subject -- not building a police facility at the Civic Center -- needs to be raised at the June 23 City Council meeting, along with a strong "Hands off our library!" message to city officials.
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