Column: Has City Center been judiciously considered?
A vocal minority’s intermittent cheerleading promotes the massive City Center project. Their objective: replace the city library with a +$75 million, three-times-the-size library complex just east of the Nugget Casino. (The ‘official’ $49 million cost curiously excludes 30 years of interest payments.)
Absent from this well-intentioned, but ill-conceived project are viability, necessity and prudence.
A September 15, 2011 city staff presentation to supervisors contains no consideration of other library alternatives, e.g., relocating to existing commercial space, re-merging with the state Library in an underutilized facility, or re-allocating space in existing library buildings.
City staff and supervisors have received itemized factual omissions and inaccuracies, absent analysis and fantasy financial assumptions; they have chosen to ignore alternative solutions, concerns and vulnerabilities surrounding this project. Effectively, the supervisors have abdicated their elected duties by failing to objectively research all viable alternatives. Now, only the city’s voters can rationally decide this project’s fate.
Carson City irrationally seeks this project lured by a promised $10 million charitable contribution from the Adams Trust, owner of the Nugget Casino. This money could be used for many other charitable/community purposes. Just the Trust’s parking lot donations will generate +$1 million in Federal income tax savings while ridding it of stranded assets lacking a private buyer. Over 500 surface parking spaces will be replaced by a 395-space, $12 million garage for the Casino and library.
If the present plans proceed, the city will spend all $11 million of its redevelopment funds and raid the water and solid waste reserves. How will new jobs be attracted with no incentive money?
The school district’s 3,500 computers for +7,500 students and staff have not been marshaled to address the professed “immediate need” for new after-school computers to reduce juvenile delinquency.
We have no space utilization census of existing public and private venues to support construction of a $4 million, 180-seat auditorium.
Carson City has no ongoing funding for the grandiose learning and training programs proposed. Its Business Resource Center’s manager’s position will soon disappear unless someone can find new funding, as his salary is paid by an expiring Federal stimulus grant. Yet, the city library pays an assistant director and a director.
Where will Carson City find +$150,000/month for new library complex lease payments over the next 30 years? This new expense doubles the library’s annual budget without funding staff or materials accompanying an exponentially larger building. No consideration has been given to the future fate of the existing, paid-for city library complex.
Let’s examine a comparable Cheyenne, Wyoming. It built an enormous downtown library in 2005 and has not seen the type of renaissance, community training, job growth or heightened usage promised by Carson City’s mega-library advocates. Cheyenne suffers an oversized library with hundreds of underutilized computers.
Carson City already has four public libraries: Western Nevada College, the city library, the state Library (which until 1969 was part of the city library) and the state Law Library. The four do not share administrative costs, catalogs, collections, circulation or IT systems, nor make volume material purchases. The same absence of collaboration afflicts public libraries statewide.
Nevertheless, the city library director and the Nevada Library Association have rejected researching collaboration possibilities for cost savings and better service. City Center pursuits have superseded prudent management.
A group of volunteers have coalesced behind a City Center ballot initiative. If you believe the city has abdicated its fiduciary responsibilities by imprudently pursuing this project, then sign the petition. (You must be a registered Carson City voter.) In November, a genuine community majority can then decide the fate of this massive, unjustified project.
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