Brenda Konkel accuses the mayor of being dictatorial. No surprise. Konkel makes an unsubstantiated suggestion that the mayor is sexist. Still not surprising. Ald. Marsha Rummel sends an angry letter to the mayor accusing him of skipping input from the Council on the Central Library plans. Now it's getting interesting.
If you or staff had at least checked in with all alders with some potential meeting dates and the majority could meet at noon, it would be easier for me to accept that I could not attend. But you did not.
This briefing appears to give you cover to go to the Library Board on Monday before the resolution has even been introduced. Don't forget the Library Board commissioned HGA who presented three rehab option during the Surplus committee meeting discussion, I believe they know what it could entail.
Ouch. Of course, no matter how inclusive Mayor Dave makes the library discussion, he is getting blasted for his handling of the deal. The same crowd that criticized his position on the Edgewater is going after him for giving up too early on the construction of a new central library. While the mayor contends that the contractor demanded too high a price, community activists such as Troy Thiel, the chair of the Downtown Coordinating Committee, see the mayor's stubborness on the library costs as hypocritical, given that he was willing to help the Edgewater developers finance their project with $16 million of Tax Incremental Financing. This is what Thiel wrote in an email to various city officials.
"There are TENS (and Millions of $$$) reasons why the current track makes the worst sense. In terms of public investment return, the Edgewater doesn't even come close...This "death of the deal" is over less than 1% of the total project cost....how does that make ANY sense? In a project that was roundly supported? Look at what has happened with the new Sequoya Library and how it's succeeded? We CAN do this."
