Mayor Kathie Novak has done a good job of creating vacant lots, empty business and hotels; and now we have the fine distinction of being a city that will no longer have a library . I just want to say how impressed I am with the shortsightedness of our council. What a legacy for our children.

The Rangeview Library District did not come to the residents of Northglenn begging for a free ride through the donation of land. They came willing to pay a fair price for the land if their November mill levy ballot question passed. Northglenn staff presented several of the city's property as well as private properties as possible locations, but many were never researched fully and Rangeview spent a lot of wasted time following false leads. As I have said in prior e-mails, it was all a big smoke screen. In the end, only two locations in our city were available-Winburn Park and the area east of our water towers.

I want to commend Rangeview Library District for the time and effort that they put into coming back to the table with Northglenn. I have learned a lot over the last month and know that the reasons behind the failure of the library finding a spot in Northglenn lies squarely with Northglenn City Council and NOT the Rangeview Library District.

Your city council has a liaison to the Rangeview board, and Councilwoman Garner currently has that responsibility. It was further distressing to me that she publicly spoke in favor of the library, but in private she wrote statements against the library and went so far as to write several CON statements against the library for the election Blue Book. This double standard only makes we wonder if the information she has given council is truthful. From my brief experience with Rangeview and prior work with the city, I lean more towards trusting Rangeview's information.

Ms. Garner states that we should not have libraries because of the Internet. While I am a heavy user of computers and the Internet, I don't see how they are going to replace books. I think everyone out there understands that computers are good for research via the Internet, but for the most part you don't use a computer to read a book. On an even bigger scale, Rangeview was looking to make their new libraries a hub, a place to bring residents together in each city they served. They wanted to help build the community sprit. The libraries would have large meeting rooms available for resident to sign-up to use. City events such as ward meetings could also have been held there. The inclusion of having the library in a park only promoted this even more.

Your city council talks about tearing down the existing city hall and recreation center to free up land for development along 120th Avenue. Our talks have been to move these facilities somewhere away from I-25 so commercial business could be seen from the highway, but still in part of the same physical development. The idea was to have them in the area where the theaters would have been.

As a turn about in the same meetings where council forced Rangeview out of our city, council member Garner and others expressed how valuable the property at the towers was for development of a City Hall-another smoke screen. The property by the towers has been vacant since the city was incorporated and was listed as surplus property in the 1980's by the city. This allows the property to be sold. Even worse, it was condemned (taken away from its owners) for this reason. Then council decided to build where our current city hall is located. Funny they took land away from someone then did not even use it for the reason they took it. It seems now it can be sold, but only to whom the mayor and her cronies want it to be sold to.

At least the library's use would have been for the public good, not just to take someone's property for retail. Since the library could only generate limited revenue through a small coffee shop inside, it does not meet the Mayor's requirements of a large tax-generating business. The site by the tower is far larger that the maximumthree acres the district wanted and they would have only used a small portion of the land. They were also agreeable to working with us on placement of the building to help in any way with the generation of sales tax from other business. Rangeview architect sketches even showed this. They also showed the mix with a larger city facility. Every council member was able to see these sketches. One thing that residents should be very upset with council about is that all monies generated by the sale of the property at the towers are required by resolution to be used to pay down our current water debt. The half-cent sales tax we currently have could have been removed sooner.

Councilwoman Clyne even went so far as to say she was going to vote against the library and hoped they fail at the ballot. She said she wants them to have to come back to the city again next year so they could have more time to plan even though Rangeview had been working with the city in planning since 1997.

We could have used the money from the sale of the land at Winburn Park for the betterment of the park by building a children's playground for young children, a skate park for our teens, and increase the wetlands for our wildlife. If the tower property was used we could have then paid money to our water debt helping to remove a tax on our residents. Either way was a win for our residents.

So we stand today looking at a bleak future for Northglenn's library. I am concerned that our residents will blame Rangeview for our shortsightedness and punish them for it by not voting for the mill levy. At the beginning I had the very same point of view. Yet after seeing how hard Rangeview was working with us and knowing they could be bankrupt in four years, I cannot in my heart now punish our children in Thornton, Brighton, Bennet, Commerce City and Adams County for our shortsightedness.