To the editor:

Mr. Voorhees complained in his March 3 letter to the editor that the city doesn’t support library expansion.

A recent spate of proposals to expand the library revealed only the self-interests of the city Chamber of Commerce, the downtown merchants association, local developers and the few remaining neighborhoods nearby. The city administration also wanted a different layout in that area of downtown, which included moving the library, the post office, the senior center, the fire station and reconfiguring traffic flow.

Such interests attempted to use the excuse of library expansion to propose costly variations-on-a-theme: one building, downtown, with expanded parking. It’s fortunate the public sees something completely different for public library services expansion.

The city’s constituency clearly and consistently voiced the need for satellite library services (not branch libraries) to better serve neighborhoods and public schools to the north, southeast, south, southwest, west and northwest of Lawrence — nearly 29 square miles not served by a single-building-expansion-concept, and, unsurprisingly, the proposal failed.

Furthermore, library satellite service expansion cost a very small fraction of the proposed multimillion-dollar, single-building concept; it didn’t oust the public library from the perfectly good building it already has, and gave the opportunity and, more importantly, the access to enjoy the services of a truly public library system. When the city, and its elected leaders pay attention to making literary material available to everyone, that is when everyone can agree on the need to infuse the city’s public library system with more money.

Deborah Snyder,
Lawrence