Voters deny library plan

Bellingham CountryGazette – Milford,MA, Has A Quotable report on a vote where residents shot down 615 to 593 the single ballot question that would require Millis homeowners to absorb a majority of the project’s $7.3 million construction costs.

One voter, a 30-year Millis resident, believes the town does not have the money to invest in the library project.

“A library is almost a dinosaur now because everyone has a computer and can use the Internet to go into any big library and get any information they need, That’s a lot of money to spend just to check a book out.”

September 17, 2005 by Blake Uncategorized 6

mdoneil says:

September 17, 2005 at 11:51 am

Several things..
The quoted man’s comment shows how valuable he finds the library. That is a reflection of both the respondent, and of course of the library itself. Had the library attracted that man as a patron and established its value to him, perhaps they would have one more vote.

I would also like to know where they came up with a $7.3MM budget for a 19,000 square foot library. What are they making it out of diamonds?

8000 people and a 19,000 sguare foot library. My goodness, most urban libraries have a 0.75 square foot per capita ratio (from some study I read in library school). 2.375 feet per person? Geez I lived in a smaller dorm room.

While the man first quoted has a low opinion of the library I’ll have to agree that it seems excessive; they could buy everyone in the town a complete set of Encyclopedia Britanica for that cost, that should keep them reading for a while. Every person- not every family!

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shoe says:

September 17, 2005 at 3:16 pm

This just gets me

This is probably the same type of person that takes the sponsored links on Google as gospel.

“Everyone has a computer and can get everything they need on the internet.” Yeah, including misinformation.

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GregS* says:

September 17, 2005 at 6:05 pm

Re:Several things..
Might be a case of ‘keeping up with the Jones’. There’s been a lot of library development in Mass and they’ve all been big (bigger then that one but for about the same price so I don’t know what’s going on there).

There’s been an emphasis here on space. Space for meeting rooms, study rooms, and very open work areas with lots of tables and study carols. In a sense they pay for themselves because it makes the library much more of a community center. We get to have a bigger variety in programming and fund raisers and a lot of people use the library who never would have before.

I was just talking about this with someone concerning the issue of men using the library. I see them bringing in their laptops and other work stuff more and more. I think environment is the one thing we can offer that will guarantee higher male usage, even if they don’t check out books.

As for the quote, yes he’s ill-informed, but who’s fault is that?

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mdoneil says:

September 18, 2005 at 8:14 am

Re:This just gets me
I was talking to Elvis at Wal*Marts today and he says Google.com is where it’s at!

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Curmudgeony says:

September 19, 2005 at 1:40 am

Re:This just gets me
So you saw him there? Thats funny, I saw Elvis on teh interwebs and he said the same thing. Boy he sure does get around.

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Duncan says:

September 23, 2005 at 2:59 am

Re:Several things..
Whether or not $7.3MM is a lot for the Millis Library depends on what they have to do. We finished one about 2 1/2 years ago for $5.9 million, but we didn’t have to purchase the land, nor did we have to buy all new furniture. I understand that costs of construction materials – wood, concrete, structural steel – have increased a lot over the past couple of years. Without seeing the design, it’s also a bit hard to know what all was to be included in the $7.3MM.

The ballot proposal in Millis only lost by 22 votes.

A brand new director, Linda Stetson, had just come aboard the week previous to the election.

Even in a community of only 8,000 22 votes shouldn’t be that difficult to recoup, should the board decide to try again.

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