American LibrariesSearch American Libraries  |
||
Site Navigation
Left Sidebar ItemsOnline Features
|
||
Task Force Formed to Study Regina PL ClosingsThe Regina (Sask.) Public Library board has appointed five persons to a task force charged with reviewing its controversial plan to close three branches and the library’s art gallery. Announced December 16 during a standing-room-only meeting at which opponents called for a halt to the closings, the task force is headed by Garnet Garven, dean of the University of Regina’s faculty of administration. The other members include a community leader, a retired public servant, a small-business owner, and a human resource consultant. “It’s not within [the task force’s] mandate to overturn decisions,” board Chair Faye Cameron said in the December 17 Regina Leader-Post, “but they can certainly bring back findings that might suggest alternative ways of approaching the issue.” The task force plans to establish a website and fax and telephone numbers for public input; no public meetings were announced, but the task force mandate does call for it to “consult with the public and relevant interest groups.” The library’s Friends group has called the task force a “masked farce” and announced it would elect a nine-member “citizens’ task force,” with representatives from the branch libraries and the arts community, to provide a genuine public voice. Friends spokesperson Bernadette Wagner told the Leader-Post that the official task force “is just a smokescreen to defer attention away from the real issues of public accountability and public trust.” Meanwhile, another grassroots group was formed at a December 11 public meeting to lobby for the library. The Connaught Library Association, named after a 73-year-old branch on the city’s west end marked for closure, intends to work with Friends groups and other advocates. “There are so many people that patron the Connaught Library who are so incensed, absolutely incensed at this closure that they want to have a voice,” said Julie Atter, a member of the group’s steering committee. Posted December 19, 2003. |
Right Sidebar
|
|
