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Pay Attention to Details

Can a voter question economic development? The library is more than doubling its size at its present location, where parking’s already difficult, impacting commerce. How can we shop local if we can’t park local?

Handing the Academy site over to a developer has been the behind-the-scenes strategy since before the prior library referendum. Taxpayers will pay for the Academy building’s removal regardless of what these influential forces would have us believe. A development like the Mews can be built there, contributing $15 million (assessed value) to Madison’s $2.9 billion tax base, but will permanently losing historic district public space make those with eye-popping tax bills happy? What’s the Scranton site’s development value?

Guilford’s 34,000-square-foot library has 45 spaces, including 12 for staff, and 77 spaces down Park Street. There are no parking time limits around the Guilford Green or along Water Street, and no commercial businesses nearby. Guilford Library’s event room holds 150 and hosts as many as four events daily. In January, one event had 140 attendees.

The Scranton Library’s 37,000-square-foot library would add merely 47 parking spaces. Staff parking? There are only 44 spots along Wall Street and a two-hour parking restriction. Not enforced? Tell the merchants. Madison’s main drag? A three-hour limit. Scranton Library’s 80-seat event room is Madison’s cultural event spot.

If these influential forces had put a quarter of the same effort into moving the library to the Academy site that they’ve used over the years to hide this strategy, we would’ve had a wonderful new library years ago—and they call this “economic development.”

Voters can prevent this mistake, then see which candidates this fall will get the library built where it should always have been—at the Academy site.

I encourage your readers to pay attention to details, have an opinion, and vote.

Emily Eisenlohr

Madison