New McAuliffe Branch Shot Down

I'm fairly upset by the failure of the Town Meeting in Framingham to approve a new Christa McAuliffe branch library in Saxonville. The project failed passing by 3 votes, and only because of a 2/3 vote was required to pass the article. There was far more than 50% of the vote supporting the project.

One of the many reasons this is unfortunate is because the new library would anchor the Saxonville neighborhood. Unlike the Golden Triangle that the site focuses on, Saxonville is a small, but developed neighborhood with a giant, old mill and a small shopping plaza. The library would support the area becoming more defined, and with it's meeting room would support neighborhood activities. The library proposed was not perfect, it had a very high cost per square foot that was much higher than the benchmark of the under-construction high school and would likely cause increased traffic to Saxonville. But with an Arts Center similar to TCAN under construction, it would have made sense to approve it and support the local area. Many Town Meeting members stated that it would be much more than just a library, it would be a neighborhood anchor, which is something that the current McAuliffe Library cannot claim due to it's cramped layout, lack of meeting space, and lack of technology.

Many compared the library to an emphasis on the divide between North Framingham and South Framingham. But it's more than that. I normally never agree with the Planning Livable Communities, but this time she hit the nail on the head. Why are all of the public buildings in South Framingham? Sure, we've got a couple schools, one of them closed due to budget constraints, and the School Dept. headquarters, but we've got nothing else. It's ridiculous to assume that North Siders can simply walk over to the main library to get books, it's incredibly unsafe to walk due to traffic, and let's face it, walking down Concord St. is not exactly scenic.

Which gets to another point. Critics have continually stated how wonderful the main library is. Sure it's got a better selection than McAuliffe, but it's not like that library is state of the art either. How many libraries can you not get from the Children's section to the main section without having to walk around the entire section. Plus, the parking garage at the library has been condemned in the past, so I tend to wonder how great a condition that library is. Natick and Wellesley both have great new libraries, but why not Framingham. One Town Meeting member stated that Natick and Wellesley's libraries are main, not branches, so they naturally deserve special attention. The amount of the population of Framingham with library cards living within the areas that are going to use the McAuliffe branch is more than how many live in the entire town of Wellesley.

The way that voting was set up was somewhat mediocre, given that the town is now buying the land that the library was to be built on, but not approve the construction. I'm wondering exactly what the town is going to do with half a parking lot. The town owns too much useless land as it is, why are we buying land that will never be used due to the library's disaproval. Now the town will probably have to pay to sand and plow this useless parking lot too. It was a good idea to lock in the lower price on the land, but unless the library gets built it will just be an asset sold again sometime in the future.

Framingham lost big time on this move, and a big disappointment to me was the 2/3 majority vote. If the country had a 2/3 majority vote then I don't think we'd have a president-elect right now. But there is still a chance, according to the MetroWest Daily News, just not a very good one. I'd suggest to the libraries, if you can without losing the state grant (another great reason for the project), cut off half of the library, and built that half later. Anything to get this project through would be a miracle.

• Library land money OK'd, but construction money shot down