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Their governing structure is described in the Ontario Public Libraries Act. A nineâ€"person board is appointed by city council and the two local school boards. The board is legally a separate entity from the city. For example, it is the employer of library staff. As the municipality is responsible for the majority of library funding and also has an In advance of the public consulâ€" tation we will participate in the next few months, it might be helpful for the community to know a little more about the running of public libraries. The two boards have recomâ€" mended to council that a new faciliâ€" ty shared by the organizations and located by the Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex would resolve space problems common to both, provide convenient access by the public to three facilities, and allow consultation costs to be supported by a SuperBuild grant. The grant application was approved by counâ€" cil on April 9, 2001, but the council reserves the right to make a final decision on this project. Ithough the Waterloo library Agoard is pleased there have een expressions of support for the library over the last few months, it is concerned there is some resulting misinformation that will confuse the community while also making it more difficult for city council to arrive at a decision on any form of facility expansion. This is too important an issue to rush through, no matter how strong various opinions. To this end the library board has made a joint preâ€" sentation to city council on March 4, along with representatives from the YMCA board, to provide some background information on the needs that have been identified, what has been recommended, and on the public consultation that has and will take place. Library expansion issue is too important to rush through You said it QUESTION WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR FUN DURING MARCH Considering that Waterloo has a population of approximately 100,000, and with an average stanâ€" dard of .6 square feet per capita, Waterloo should have about 60,000 square feet of library space today to service a population of this size. Waterloo library with the main and one branch currently has 38,800 square feet, a shortfall today of 21,200 square feet without any allowance for future growth. More importantly, since the McCormick branch was added in 1973 and a small 150 square feet Perhaps, not realizing, this has led to some misinformation about library services. For example, in the last annual counting week survey in 2001, the branch library had 1,218 people through the doors and the main library had 6,723 people through the doors. This is a 15 per cent increase in visitors from the previous year, despite such impacts as home technology. In fact, our provision of technology probably contributed to this increase. And, the library has happily been open again on Sunday afternoons for the last four years. The Waterloo public library board heids regular meetings at least 10 times a year, and these are open to the public with the stanâ€" dard proviso that some items (for example, personnel, property) may have to be discussed "in camera" or privately. Delegations are always welcome to speak at the beginning of the meeting or to ask for inforâ€" mation afterwards. interest in it as a prime community service, a strong cooperative spirit needs to be fostered between the board and city. However, the library board is an independent body and makes recommendations to the council that it feels are in the best interest of the community. Agreeâ€" ments on how to proceed, while desirable, are not always possible. mE "Going to the movies to see Ice Age, and play with my friend." "There‘s nothing really to do. Just go to the mall and walk around, I guess." ) THE CHRONICL]I Dave Andretol Quinn Carter COMMENT In closing, the board encourages the citizens of Waterloo to take a part in their library by getting informed, attending board meetâ€" ings, writing to its newly elected chair Bob Taylor or calling the chief librarian, Joanne Tate. This information will be useful for assessing and planning future services. The library board has conducted an extensive fiveâ€"year review of needs, issues, and options regardâ€" ing library services and facilities. Though these reviews have been reported faithfully in the media, public meetings and presentations to council have been held, comâ€" ments have been gathered, and reports have been on hand in the library or provided to interested citâ€" izens, there is obviously the need for more. These are not simple issues and they do not deserve simplistic soluâ€" tions. As such, the library board is very pleased that the city is now releasing the study by University of Waterloo Prof. Geoffrey Wall that it commissioned in 2001. In a Record article of March 5 it was reported that only 10 per cent of people surveyed by the library in 1997 favoured an expansion on the site of the current main library. Customers had only been asked about east or west branches and an expanded main library, not where a main library should be situated. The respondents were 77 per cent in favour of a larger main branch library, which led the board to study options and costs on the current site. was allocated in the 1988 main library renovation, there has been no increase in space for children â€" a sad case for a growing city such as Waterloo. trustee, past chair Waterloo public library "Play outside with friends, and get ready for Lisa‘s seventh birthday party." "Just partying. Maybe some snowboarding." Lisa and Janice Cooper Terry Hallman. Chris Marion No one would accuse Mike Harris of being "passive" during his seven years in office, but the choice is not simply between doing what Harris did and "doing nothing". As with my com:â€" ment above regarding "making choices", the problem is that his definition of "the top" is suspect. The risks he took were in the service of an agenda that was ultimately destructive. Moreover, it is never as risky to do things that please the wealthy and powerâ€" ful than it is to challenge them to have society‘s broader interests at heart. Mike Harris and his supporters brag that he "thinks outside the box" (meaning that he didn‘t let conventional wisdom get in the way of a good idea). I disagree. For example, after cancelling 17,000 social housing units, and killing rent control and wreckâ€" ing tenant rights legislation, Harris still can‘t figure out that the private sector is simply not capable of meeting the need for affordable housing. Rental housing starts continue to stagnate, but the Tories cannot get past their ideological aversion to a govâ€" ernment role in the housing market. It‘s not that they think outâ€" side of the box at all; they simply think inside of a different box of their own creation. 5) "Risk failure rather than risk nothing: Leaders must decide between passive mediocrity and failure while reaching for the top. Only one of those will lead to true success." 4) "Play the role of challengerâ€"inâ€"chief: Leaders must chalâ€" lenge, deconstruct and scrutinize everything that people place in front of them." 3) "Trust your own instincts: When the status quo isn‘t working, you won‘t find solutions from the soâ€"called experts of the day." The status quo isn‘t working now (e.g. tax cuts are not stimuâ€" lating the economy as promised, but merely depleting governâ€" ment revenues), but Harris has continued to rely on the "soâ€" called experts of the day". His problem is not with listening to advice. He simply dismissed the experts that contradicted what he wanted to do and listened to the experts who reinforced it. Harris actually stated, "If I had to do it all over again, I would have tried to do more and do it more rapidly." He pointed specifically to changes in education as something that should have been implemented more rapidly. As it is, teachers are still implementing the new curriculum on the fly, without the necessary resources and textbooks for support. It‘s difficult to imagine a more haphazard and rushed approach to education reform than the "invent a crisis" approach that Harris employed. In addition, if the "more and more rapidly" approach was used across the board, we may well have had more homeless people freezing on the streets, more people dying on their way to emergency rooms, and a tainted water criâ€" sis years before we did. Of course, leadership is "making choices". The question is: which choices does a government make? And, since it "cannot please all of the people all of the time", which people does it choose to please? The Harris gOVeInâ€" â€" mm ment consistently choose to implement e policies that pleased corporgle and ( ANOTHER | other private interests. It consistently [ VIEW | undermined the interests of the poor | and the disenfranchised and attacked 4 a "“" B the public services on which they l e depend. Good leadership is about makâ€" & Fg ing good choices. Harris‘ legacy is one W a of bad choices that quite deliberately W 9 C 3 hurt "some people" (and it was nearly | [ o jike always the same "some people" being ol =*" hurt). 2) "Do not procrastinate: Leaders must move decisively and swiftly to make change, especially in large, comâ€" plex organizations or corporations." 1) "Do not seek consensus in a crisis: Leaders cannot please all the people all the time because leadership is about making choices that some people will not always agree with." The defining moment in Harris‘ last month occurred on March 5, when he spoke to the Toronto Board of Trade (what political junkies would call "his crowd"). Harris outlined "five principles" that guided his government. ! list them below (straight from the PC Party website), along with my comments. ext week, I‘ll have some lastâ€"minute reflections on the Nfive candidates in the Ontario PC leadership race. This week, I want to concentrate on the legacy of the person that songwriter Nancy White calls "the Duffer of Doom": outgoâ€" ing Premier Mike Harris. Harris could have gone quietly into the sunset, joined the PGA Seniors Tour, and survived nicely on his lavish government pension/RRSP and the inevitable corporate directorships. Instead, he is suing the Globe and Mail at taxpayer expense and is making a series of increasingly strident speeches around the province. It is unclear whether he is doing this because he wants to rehabilitate his image in preparation for an entry into federal politics or because, as Toronto Star columnist Linwoodâ€"Barclay suggests, he merely enjoys "poking people in the eve". Mike‘s parting shot