City Council to Decide Library Issue April 24

Our city council agreed to consider the library proposal again on April 24. That means among other things that time is running out if we expect to make a difference on this issue. I went to the city council meeting tonight to help spread the word to people watching the streaming video about our petition. Here's a copy of the remarks that I made in support of our petition. Good Evening. My name is Jerry Kosicki. I am a 30-year resident of the Dublin School District and a 22 year resident of the city. I think the community should say yes to the new library project that the CML wants to build for us. The current library needs to be replaced. We all agree on that. The current building is not historic and it will be replaced with another larger but non-historic building. The scale is not out of line with what’s been built at Bri-Hi, and some of the building will be below the existing grade to minimize its height. The new design is dramatic and imaginative and will be great for that spot. Critics have said it doesn’t fit old Dublin, but honestly, as people come over the pedestrian bridge from Bridge Park East and past the mixed use Building Z that is nearing construction on the west side, it will seem like a perfect fit to most people. Cities grow organically and one of the things we all most love about old Dublin -- its authenticity – that it was built by people, building by building, over a long period of time and the buildings are records in times in which they were built and the people who built them. The proposed building will be an authentic representation of our time. Sometimes change is hard for some people to accept. Others thrive on it. A major library is an important building in any city as it stands as a monument to learning and human advancement through knowledge. Libraries throughout the world have been embracing contemporary design because it has a unique ability to unleash human imagination and encourage creative thinking in young people and adults. People have said the building doesn’t fit. We disagree. If there ever has been a community built on education and entrepreneurial and unconventional out of the box visionary thinking it is Dublin. It is this creative spirit and get-things-done attitude that has attracted so many of us to this very remarkable city that we love, and proudly call home. Repurposing the site of Dublin’s first three-story school building for human learning helps renew the connection between this prominent historic spot within the community and the intense commitment to public education and maximizing human potential that the city and its people are all about. If that’s not an appropriate use, I don’t know what is. With a few partners – Dublin residents Kevin Cooper, Kris Aldemir and Andrew Graham – we have created a petition on change.org in support of the contemporary library and invite the people of Dublin to sign on to our grassroots movement. People have been finding our petition for over two weeks with nothing more than word of mouth and social networks to carry the word. We have no money for advertisements and our message is strictly a positive one. Too often divisiveness, anger and resentment are more powerful factors in our public life than cooperation, logic and reasonableness. Libraries are temples of learning and logic, so I think that’s the appropriate way to wage the campaign. In just about 2.5 weeks we have gathered 245 signatures and are not finished yet. People watching the streaming of this meeting can find our petition at change.org’s website. You can google change.org Build the New Dublin Library to find it. To put that number in context, that’s 75 percent of the signatures that an opposing petition took about 5 or 6 weeks to get. I think it shows there is a lot of latent support in the community for the library project that has not had a place to be represented. Signing our petition is an endorsement of our desire to improve a small corner of our community, and do it in a grassroots, bottom up way for the benefit of all. I think that people power works, especially when directed towards making life better for the whole community. Thanks for all you do.