On Thursday, someone posted the link to the GuelphToday article about the passage of the alternative proposal for the Baker District Project on Reddit. After just a few hours, it had 54 comments, and I pre-emptively winced as I clicked to see them.
It turned out that some of the comments in the thread weren’t that bad from a hyper-partisan perspective, which is surprising given the pre-meeting vitriol. Before Wednesday’s vote, Councillor Dan Gibson said it would be a months-long project to rebuild some of the relationships on and off council after the rancor of this particular debate.
That’s a shame. No debate should come with a reclamation effort to retrieve professional relationships. I mean, to vote against the new library project is not like voting in favour of starting the Purge!
To Gibson, I will say that if there was an argument that would make me change my mind about the library, it probably would have be his. To his credit, he tried to lay out his argument logically, and directly, and though I think he sensed it was an uphill battle, he did his best not to make it personal.
Mayor Cam Guthrie’s concerns about proverbially putting all our eggs in one basket I think was also valid, but if there’s a proposal for a total reclamation of Guelph’s roads and sidewalks, I haven’t seen it. And if there is documentation prepared by staff about the potential impacts on Guelph’s road work because of Metrolinx’s track work, then I think that’s something we should see before another Margaret Greene Park-style landmine.
In terms of unpersuasive arguments, there was the one about not following the wishes of the silent majority. So where were they?
My own examination of the correspondences gathered for the meeting revealed that only 25 per cent of the letters didn’t endorse the Baker project outright, and only two-thirds of them absolutely said no to the idea of proceeding the project; the other third proposed amending or postponing the project.
My feeling is that the 60-some odd no votes in the correspondences would be a hard “no” if council’s idea for a new library was a pop-up tent, one laptop, and a couple of totes filled with Clifford books and Tom Clancy spy novels. But we honestly don’t know what it is the “silent majority” wanted because they didn’t show up. There were people critical of some aspect of the project, but no one was outright against it.
There was no one to present a petition I hadn’t heard about with nearly 1,700 signatures of people against the project. Not that council is allowed to formally accept electronic petitions, but the results normally rate a mention from someone representing that faction in the debate, but at Wednesday’s meeting, it was Mayor Guthrie that brought up the petition.
When the logical arguments were exhausted, some on council fell back on illogical ones.
One councillor compared libraries to video stores, antiquated facilities that technology had outgrown in the age of Netflix and other streamers. Of course, the library does have its own streaming service, and while it has its merits, you can’t possibly get the same access in terms of the amount of material. Some books are never digitized, and the nature of securing music and film streaming rights is a conversation even trademark lawyers avoid having.
Another councillor remarked that between the VR, the 3D printer and other amenities it didn’t even sound like they were talking about library.
Forget the fact that this councillor clearly lost interest at some point during the five hours of delegations that repeatedly made the point that the library was not just a “box for books” anymore, the classism in that statement that this all was something the private sector should handle also missed the essential nature of a library as a place to share knowledge.
Few of us are lucky enough to be able to buy a 3D printer on a whim. Of course, few of us can afford to buy all the books we want to read either.
Perhaps the most disappointing thing to come out of this week’s meeting was having two major infrastructure projects on the same agenda. Intentional or not, it phrased the debate as a one-or-the-other proposition in the minds of many.
More’s the pity because both these projects were needed, and they have been needed for years. The South End Community Centre’s been in the works since 2003, the new main library since the 90s, and the fact they were pushed off for decades is a reflection of repeated short-term thinking. Why do it today when you can put it off to tomorrow? Well, now all our tomorrows are coming due.
On Twitter, one of the city councillors who voted against buying the old post office on Upper Wyndham for the new library almost 20 years ago compared the Baker project to the Taj Mahal. Back when he thought the library was too expensive, the price tag was $11.5 million.
When you put it that way, and if you think at the end of the day that this project is a waste of money, you don’t know how right you are from a certain point of view.
