By Alan Halberstadt
People reading the Page 3 article in the Windsor Star on April 28 must be shaking their heads in puzzlement. In it, Counc. Al Maghnieh attacks Windsor Public Library Board chair Andrew McAvoy for “creating fear” about City Hall’s proposal to close the Central Library Branch at 850 Ouellete Ave. and relocate it as an adjunct to the proposed new aquatics centre on the northwestern edge of downtown.
Maghnieh blasted McAvoy for deciding to go ahead with the regularly-scheduled Library Board meeting in the last week of April. McAvoy told me that Maghnieh previously related a request from Mayor Eddie Francis, in a suspected violation of the Library Act, to cancel the April meeting of the “arms length” board.
Before Magnhieh’s aggressive intervention, existing board members were eager to hold the meeting to provide an opportunity to frame their legitimate concerns around the potential closing of the Central branch, the system’s flagship.
Mayor Franics orchestrated an end run of the library board on the Central Library proposal, working directly with library CEO Barry Holmes. There is suspicion, underscored by Maghnieh’s loose lip in an interview with reporter Dalson Chen on The Star’s You Tube channel, that fancy blueprints are already in place for the new library prior to any official consultation taking place.
This might lead people to question the legitimacy of Maghnieh’s guarantee that public consultation “will be consistent and continuous with the community and with the staff of the library.”
In an administrative blunder, City Hall violated the Library Act which requires municipalities to appoint new private citizens of their library boards within 60 days of the first meeting of the new Council. Municipalities that do not adhere to the Act can put a library at risk of losing its annual grant from the province.
Council is due to finally appoint a new board Tuesday, well beyond the legislative requirement. Given this violation, a legal case could be made that the existing board should remain in place for the duration of the present four-year term.
McAvoy received legal advice to the effect that the existing board has every right to hold the April meeting. Magnhieh, presumably deathly afraid that any board member might speak against the relocation of the central library, ran to the Windsor Star, which like any populist newspaper could not resist a controversial story.
McAvoy called the meeting for Thursday. Magnhieh and Counc. Hilary Payne, appointed as minority Council representatives to the board before Easter, called in their regrets as a way of protest.
That morning, the sensational Star headline appeared: Library chair accused of ‘creating fear,’ and three other volunteer members of the board apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valour. They decided not to attend, and killed the quorum that killed the meeting.
Four members of the existing board – McAvoy, Maxine Jones, Lorena Shepley and Ron Bertram – have applied for re-appointment. Ray Guillet, Jim Stuart and myself did not re-apply. It’s my educated guess that Bertram and Shepley will be re-appointed on Tuesday, along with one or two other citizens, and they will elect Magnhieh chair.
Jones fell on her sword by attending a meeting of residents, along with McAvoy, last week at the Cencourse Building. Magnhieh told the Star he and Payne were not invited to the meeting (McIvoy indicates otherwise), but that he attended anyway.
Actually, there are reports that Magnhieh lurked outside the meeting room and allowed his adorning media to ambush him afterwards, at which time he refuted McAvoy’s presumption that the relocation would probably mean a major downsizing of branch space, staff and services.
Certainly, that would be a reasonable assumption given an April 9 assertion by a Star columnist linked closely to Mayor Francis, that the present library is “half-empty.”
I understand the people who attended the Cencourse meeting have a petition they wanted to present to the board Thursday. Now they will have to wait.
Magnhieh, in his revealing You Tube interview, gave assurances that the new board will fall in line with the city’s vision for a new central library. It’s an educated guess that the new members are already hand-picked by Counc. Magnhieh and Mayor Francis.
As former chair of the Library Board and delighted to be liberated from this kind of nasty politics, I don't have a problem with the WPL having some sort of nominal presence in an aquatics centre setting. Perhaps a book deposit, e-books and some computer stations. But not at the expense of further neglect of other branches in the nine-branch system, and closing the Central branch (which has served seniors and public housing residents in the neighbourhood so well for so long).
The current board, at the petulant urging of Mayor Francis, spent considerable time, money and human resources developing a Strategic Plan. In that document, I don’t recall any immediate concerns around the Central Branch. Quite the contrary. But the board did formulate and set some priorities for South Walkerville, Remington Park and Budimir branches which we all know are less than desirable.
In fact, City Council set aside capital budget placeholders totalling $2.1 million in 2009 for renovations and expansion of Budimir in South Windsor and the expansion of the Optimist Community Centre to serve South Walkerville and Magnhieh’s Remingon Park.
Council has now re-allocated that money to the library component of the proposed downtown aquatics centre. That action would tend to lay bare Counc. Maghnieh’s claim that WPL is “not anywhere near” finalizing the future of the Central Library Branch at 850 Ouellette Ave.
I suspect the finalization will materialize in a hurry-up business plan for the aquatics complex, to be tabled at Council as early as mid-May. Expect glitzy pictures to be attached.
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