Gen Katz, of Friends of the Oakland Public Library, rebuts Judy Offer’s letter in opposition to Measure N, saying among other things that reuse of the Kaiser Center would be no more expensive that the alternative of increasing the height of the existing Main Library.
Judy Offer’s “No” on N means no air conditioning for Rockridge, no accessible public toilets for Elmhurst and Lakeview; no expansion (ranging from 30 to 300 percent) planned for Asian, Dimond, Lakeview, Main, Piedmont, and West Oakland; and abandoning the new libraries planned for East Oakland and Laurel. Measure N funds will provide improvements and renovations for every library in Oakland.
But let’s get to the point of Judy’s objection for the Main library’s expansion into the Kaiser Center Auditorium. From her letter, I presume that Judy would not be adverse to the Main expanding by increasing the height of the existing building. The feasibility study showed that adding two floors would cost approximately the same as the reuse of the Kaiser Center. So her main objection seems to be the use of the Kaiser Center.
She suggested circuses and dog and pony shows—it hasn’t happened. Kaiser Center is shuttered. Buildings that are shuttered quickly deteriorate. The existing library building, when vacated, will not stay empty for long. Many agencies are looking for downtown expansion.
And while I am at it, the new location is a major improvement. How many of you have tried parking downtown? The Kaiser/Main will still be accessible by public transportation but it will have parking for cars and bikes— making it available to many who wouldn’t venture downtown.
As for the money… Yes, I watch my tax bill grow. The government is in the business of printing money —not making money. Everything we want we have to pay for in some way. I put my dollars on Oakland libraries. (And I consider Dimond my personal library.)
— Gen Katz
[Editor’s note: This letter is one in a series of three related letters:
- Measure N will improve Oakland’s libraries
- Judith Offer: I love the library, but NO on N
- Gen Katz rebuts Judith Offer’s “No on N”
]
Comments
Thanks to Genni Katz for reading and responding to my letter to the GUARDIAN, and to assigning me a new nickname, for which I have returned the favor. (I gave her an “i” though because that’s cuter.) I wish to answer some of what she had to say.
First, it will be sad if some of the much-needed work on branch libraries doesn’t get done because we didn’t vote in Measure N. However, we are not the ones that tried to sneak in an extra $100 million dollars of work ($300-$500 per family per year) behind the rubric “help for our libraries.” If the library had just focused on the work on the branches, and extending the hours, neither I nor probably another soul in Oakland would hesitate. This is equivalent to forcing me to adopt three children because I’m trying to take in one.
If the Library Director is so worried about the branches, I wonder why the Oakland Public Library has spent money on a fancy new, little-used “teen section” downtown when some of the branches needed toilets???
The Kaiser Auditorium is shuttered because it wasn’t being used well. It wasn’t being used well because for at least five years, the only “marketing” that had been done for it was an ad in a bridal magazine. There was no marketing director and nobody trying to make it happen. What other large city with a beautiful performing arts center would consider such behavior?! Also, the backstage crew had been allowed to charge exorbitant fees—$35 an hour per man—and would not allow people to bring in their own staff to even move chairs and tables, even one foot. Also, the Black dance companies at the Alice Arts Center had been given special rates, although they already have free space to work in every day, and the extra money had not been reimbursed to the Kaiser budget. In my opinion, this situation was allowed to continue specifically to make the Kaiser available for library use. It was a typical maneuver of the current administration, obviously done with Ms. Martinez’s agreement.
The examples of possible Kaiser uses I gave in my earlier letter were intended to suggest “whatever use.” If Genni doesn’t like dogs or ponies or old cars or choirs or mariachi or taiko drumming or theatre or ballet or opera, as I suggested, perhaps she will suggest something she does like. She sounds a bit picky to me, frankly.
I guess Genni doesn’t go to the Main Library often, or she doesn’t know where the Kaiser is, because they are about three blocks apart, and all of the same transportation/parking availability applies to either one. The parking for the Kaiser, by the way, is already in great demand during the day, for Laney students, Museum attendees and other nearby uses. Anyone afraid to go to the current Main would be equally afraid to go to the Kaiser, which in fact has a large contingent of homeless living in the park and under the highway next to it.
I suppose we do need an enlarged Main, but before we do that, how about increasing the hours of operation at all the branches, fixing the much-needed repairs, and opening the new local libraries. Maybe if the City Council gave up their travels to China and so forth we could do it with the General Fund. Maybe if we weren’t giving a deal to a developer for Oak to Ninth and a deal to the developer of the Forest City Project we could do it. Maybe…well, you get the point.
Most people, like Genni, don’t go to the Main too often. Many Oaklanders don’t have the extra $3 and the extra hour to get downtown on the bus. What they need is the ability to get in and out quickly for a book, time on the computer, or a movie. They need a safe place to read in their own neighborhood. They need homework help from a friendly librarian. They need encouragement to go to a nearby place and learn to read. We Oaklanders came out in force on a moment’s notice five years ago, to save every branch. We back them, as much as we possibly can.