Library, development ask for budget bump
August 8, 2012 at 3:00 am in Grand Forks Herald
The Grand Forks Public Library introduced a plan Tuesday to bring its employee wages up to comparable market standard over the next four years.
The plan, submitted at a city Budget Work Session, would spend about $335,000 over the course of the plan, funded using library cash reserves and a one-mill tax increase. Continue Reading
Ah, that explains yesterday’s story on the library which had absolutely no news value.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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How about we close the place and give a 10 mil tax rebate?
Hot debate. What do you think?
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This is the age of the eBook; libraries are obsolete.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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No to a head librarian with a pay package worth over 100K.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Maybe the head person is getting paid that much, but the rest of the staff basically gets minimum wage with few benefits. For some reason I don’t understand, the staff has never been considered city employees even though they really are. Stepchildren, I guess, who’s wages deserve to be at parity with other unskilled or semi-skilled workers in the city.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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This was one of a series o9f nails in the new library coffin. While the head librarian was pulling down over 100K, she was crying about the serfs. Of course, the Herald buried these numbers in its desire to get a new building. Now the Herald is at it again. As I said a while back, look for another ballot measure next June, and op eds from Jacobs and Dennis in favor of it.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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I would think so too, but apparently this library actually gets a lot of people going to it….Or at least that’s what’s been reported….
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What we get are numbers released by the library which the Herald unquestioningly prints. This is much like the Alerus’ habitual “profits”, until a forensic accountant came in and revealed the red ink. When it comes to one of the Herald’s sacred cows, there is never any negative reporting.
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and here we go again with these people comparing their salaries to those in Minneapolis and crying about it.
If they feel under paid, maybe its because they are in a dying field.
If i never see another article about our library it will suit me fine.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Well Cap…when I was in the TC’s a short while back a homeless man was washing up in the bathroom inside the Hennepin County Library on Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis on a sunny weekday afternoon when in came another homeless person and shot him, paralyzing him. Because of this incidence I feel the librarians in the TC’s deserve the extra money and the GF librarian has very little to complain about as far as her salary goes. If she wants to take the risk and added expense of living in the TC’s metro area she is welcome to do so. It’s not a cheap place to live. Groceries are higher and so is housing. And by the way…their water has a strange brown color to it. You can’t drink that stuff. Just sayin’.
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“their water has a strange brown color to it.”
Are you sure you weren’t drinking Summit Great Northern Porter?
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Amazing…Can’t afford a home or much of anything else, but still can afford a gun….And is able to get one in the first place….Simply amazing…
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We drove past this library almost everyday. The man who was paralyzed had a laptop with him. I assume he used the internet at the library. It wasn’t a robbery though. There was no clear motive.
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Amazing…Can’t afford a home or much of anything else, but still can afford a laptop….And is able to get one in the first place….Simply amazing…
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tj, let’s get this clear. Wendy Wendt is a library director, not a librarian. The librarians…plural, I believe are the reference staff. Now if you are going to insult someone for their position, money or whatever, at least get the facts straight.
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Yeah, and Ralph Kramden was a transportation facilitator. Amazing how a euphemism bumps up a salary.
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Don’t forget ol’ Norton was in Sewage Waste Management…..
You do have a point though…Like where I work…Dispatchers became something lofty like Area Load Managers…..Nice title with no extra pay….So I claimed that us truckers should be considered as Freight Management Experts….Still waiting to hear back from them on that one…About eight years or so….
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I’m an underwater ceramic technician, point of sales service assistant, lead management coordinator, a beverage therapist, and a barista.
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So, you wash dishes, take and serve food orders, and make drinks.
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On a lake..yes I do. I work for my parents part-time. They took over my grandparent’s resort about eight years ago. Since then I have been going back and forth to the French River area of Ontario for a couple of weeks at a time to run the restaurant and the bar. One of my sisters rotates with me. I didn’t plan on doing this. It just happened.
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pfft
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Hey TJ…..Have you noticed all these bikini ads with the extremely small bikini’s? I wonder if the same people who were freaking out about this kind of wear being sold close to a school are contacting the Herald to insist they take the ads off because their kids will see them? Foolish foolish people…Same damn sort of stuff Fantasy’s sells…
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Tundra I have been drooling over all the rock-hard athletic male bodies during the Olympics. The swimming events are my favorite. The less clothes the better on an athlete in my opinion. Let the games begin should be changed to let the games never end.
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I go to several libraries from time to time. Other than the library at UND, there are children at these libraries.
The kids are happy, as they go there to explore and find out new ideas. As far as I am concerned, libraries are essential to a child’s development.
We hear that there is nothing for kids to do. The library is a great place for kids that want to be there.
What is the price for not educating a child??? Look at what we spend for jails, prisons, courts and the likes. If a kid can go to a library and learn, then the price is worth it.
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I’ve been waiting for the ubiquitous “It’s for the children” rationale.
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Well it IS for the children. What are you saying? That children don’t deserve a good library? That seems Dickensonian to say the least.
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Are there no prisons, no workhouses?
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What? You haven’t seen the GOP end game?
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I’ve wondered how true to the times Oliver Twist was? Dure as hell wouldn’t want to see anything close to that.
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As long as that “Library Education” includes teaching them to BE QUIET, I don’t have an objection.
Children should be seen and not heard.
It’s a library. Shhhhhhh!
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Or the kids turn into RINOS (tea partiers) or libertarians. See what a lack of knowledge gets us.
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There’s no better investment in the future of Grand Forks than the library system. During these difficult economic times it’s an affordable outlet for children and families. There’s a group of cranky folks who don’t want to invest in anything in Grand Forks and they seem to dominate these blogs. More progressive folks would agree that if a community is to thrive and for childrenm to learn there;s no better place than the library.
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You equate one with the other….It’s not that most of us have a problem with some type of library that is actually updated with modern tech and in a sensible setting. It’s that to bring on the idea that we need to build a library in the style of what we now have, but with better brick and mortor is akin to pushing for better stables for the police department once automobiles were clearly the technology replacing the horse. If the bang they get for the buck is a frog fart pop then people will consider someone is throwing money away…….If they came up with a sensible proposal then I think there’s be plenty of support, but so far that hasn’t been the case…
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Well except for Gene….He is kind of a cranky old guy……..Then again…I guess it takes one to know one….
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“Crank old guy” is redundant. We all suffer from what John Donne called “age, agues, tyrannies.” Makes it easy to go gentle into that good night.
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The car/horse analogy is instructive, although I must admit I’m ignorant about intestinal gas among amphibians. As others have said for some time, the current library system, which has been in existence for millenia, is on its way out. Stacks of books have already been replaced. An analyst for Barclay’s Bank published a note today predicting the impending demise of the PC. As the GFPL pushes for another brick and mortar complex, technology is rendering it obsolete; the Cloud will replace it.
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People want access to free books. They want a big fancy palace of a library with an expensive fireplace and cushy chairs and all the trimmings. A library should be in a cold warehouse with dim lighting. Get your book and go home, the taxpayers pay for this. As for these library employees, sure maybe they need a raise.
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About a year or two ago, the Herald did an article about the Library’s new logo. Claimed it was part of a “branding” concept.
Made me so angry that I didn’t sleep that night. What the hell are they wasting money on this crap for when legitimate library needs are going unmet?
(The new logo reminds me of a tuckus with explosive flatulence.)
Why do they need a brand identity when THEY HAVE NO COMPETITION.
At any rate, I decided my reaction actually meant that I still have a strong emotional tie to the GF Public Library. I’d prefer it wasn’t a cold warehouse with dim lighting. I’d actually LIKE for it to be comfy and warm, with REAL coffee and other beverages/snacks for sale. A Barnes and Noble without the price tags on the books–and a lot more chairs.
None of which changes the basic argument: The taxpayers were told in ’72 that the “new” (at that time) library was DESIGNED TO BE EXPANDED. The lot it was built on was enormous. Plenty of room to expand the building AND the parking lot.
Why do they now expect us to abandon that building for a new one? Why was the lot subdivided and part sold off? Why do we now have to make up for the incompetence of the Library Board?
How can White Elephant Civic Center employees get City benefits but Library staff doesn’t? (And what justifies the excessive salary of the Library Director?)
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