FORT FRANCES—The Fort Frances Public Library board passed a motion Wednesday night to keep the plans for a new library as a stand-alone project—at least until the local public school board can provide information on cost-savings to sway their opinion.
Library board chair Joyce Cunningham said Thursday morning a special meeting of the library board was held to talk exclusively about the idea of a joint library project with the Rainy River District School, which first was discussed during a meeting April 15 between the two boards and the town.
“We did discuss it in great detail,” Cunningham noted.
“We discussed our perceptions and our recollections of what had been said of that meeting of the three parties, and we went over some of what we had learned from our detailed research about joint facilities of public libraries and school libraries.”
The library board’s motion that will be sent to both the school board and town council, along with a letter of explanation.
The motion reads: “After considerable discussion and on the advice of our project manager and architect, we inform the Rainy River District School Board of our preference for building a stand-alone facility, unless the Rainy River District School Board can demonstrate considerable cost-savings for the library through shared space.”
“The letter will suggest that we and school board representatives meet during the week of May 20 to discuss it in more detail and to hear more of their proposal regarding shared facilities, and particularly if they see cost-savings,” said Cunningham.
The library board chose that week, she added, to give the school board time to prepare information, as well as the fact many library board members would be out of town in the weeks between now and then.
Cunningham also said the library board has a regularly-scheduled meeting on May 28, and by that time would like to have some sort of resolution once and for all to the validity of the proposed joint project.
Cunningham said the library board would like to see clear evidence of what savings might be actualized, as well as get a better picture of how a joint facility might be built.
“We did a great deal of discussing and analyzed costs, and we, the library board, cannot see any cost-savings,” she remarked.
“The only time we could think there would be a cost-saving is if there is a shared space, and we had not understood how that would really work,” she added.
“So, we kept going round and round and saying, ‘What do you think they were proposing?’ Because nothing was really proposed at the other meeting [on April 15],” Cunningham continued.
“They seemed to indicate they were doing this only with the purpose of trying to save us money,” she said. “If that’s the case, we’re saying, ‘Come and explain how, please, because we haven’t figured out how.’”
(Fort Frances Daily Bulletin)
Fort Frances Times
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