Brand X’s Niles: New Library? Bah, Humbug
Niles: The new library is certainly keeping with the trends set by our tax and spend elected officials. It sits on prime land that was grossly overpaid for. It is opulent. It is located not to serve most of the community but where it can serve the people who demand opulence in everything they own and do. Did CDA need a bright, shiny new library downtown? Did CDA have the extra $6.5 million used to build that library? Would a $2 million overhaul of the old library given us just as fine a facility and more centrally located? I guess it doesn't matter, does it? The money is spent. The choices were made? Now the average CDA citizen gets too look up at the elite as they again are catered to by our elected officials paying the luxurious tab with our money. This would be the average CDA citizen that the same elected officials demand pay to fix the city sidewalk that the city installed on their land. The enormity of the inequity is astounding.
DFO: Normally, I ignore the magpies at the Coeur d'Alene Press blogs. But this forwarded post by someone pseudonymed Niles was too good to pass up. It represents the views of the small noisy crowd who are against everything in this town. The viewtiful new library. Kroc Center. Riverstone. Education corridor. Urban renewal financing. Etc. Thanks to visionaries, average people will forever have a million-dollar view of Coeur d'Alene's pristine lakefront. Small-minded people like Niles would have us build a metal building with books warehoused on cheap board shelves overlooking fast-food row on Appleway. Hey, it'll save a few bucks, right? Thank goodness that people like miserly Niles have little influence in this town.