Viewpoints
Million Dollar Blunder at
the Public Library?
By Robert D. Warner
November 21, 2009
Saturday PM
Dear SITNEWS Editor:
With the City Manager's plea to the City Council to increase
properity taxes next year, it seems most urgent to end careless
and wastefull spending.
In September, Mr.
Rodney Dial wrote a letter to SITNEWS analyzing spending
patterns of both the Gateway Borough and the City of Ketchikan.
He discovered that about 1.57 million dollars was spent on a
design for a new public library on a site that was not even suitable
for a library.
Who are the city officials responsible for this blunder? Why
haven't they been disciplined for incompetence? Such waste of
public money cannot be tolerated, even in the best of economic
times.
While librarians are not architects, they are trained to know
criterion essential to site selection for libraries. Selecting
the old Main School site demonstrates gross incompetence in my
opinion, especially when the city had to be told twice that this
site would not work. Competent library staff could have prevented
over a million dollars from being wasted.
A special note of thanks to Mr. Dial for presenting his research
on how our local government funds are being spent. Hopefully,
the Ketchikan City Council will keep his examples clearly in
mind as they prepare the budget for 2010.
Robert D. Warner
Ketchikan, AK
Received November 19, 2009
- Published November 21, 2009
Related Viewpoint:
 Important
Community Information by Rodney Dial.
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