MASON CITY – The Mason City Library Board fought off a second attempt by the Mason City Chamber of Commerce to construct a performance pavilion in the north lawn of the library grounds.
The library board’s steering committee recommended to the board that construction of the pavilion be turned down. The steering committee is made up of ordinary citizens who make recommendations to the board on some issues.
“The steering committee told them (the Chamber of Commerce) ‘no’ before,” a source told NIT.
“The committee was concerned about the trees and sidewalk that are already in the lawn,” the source continued. The pavilion “doesn’t fit our mission.”
NIT was also told that the board and the committee was concerned about liability issues as well as maintaining the structure. The source confirmed that the library is tens of thousands of dollars in debt at this time and struggling to pay its bills simply from upkeep and staffing requirements even as library management searches for ways to cut costs.
“This fits right in with how this City is being run at this time,” said Fourth Ward City Council candidate Matt Marquardt. “Here is another example of Robin Anderson, using her clout at City Hall, leaning on a city-run operation (the library) to get her pet project built. Special interests are running our City at this time. It’s time to revoke Mrs. Anderson’s blank check and bring common sense back to City Hall. I commend the committee and the board for telling Mrs. Anderson ‘no’. Mrs. Anderson, we have a Band Shell. Go to East Park and use it like the rest of us do.”
I don’t know Robin. I don’t know the Barlas family. What I do find very interesting is how Robin’s picture can maintain its front page position for over a week. Yet, all of the news coverage provided by multiple news outlets (other than NIT)of the Barlas story, resulted in NIT publishing minimal information on the Barlas case AND comments were disabled. As I recall, any further court activity of this case was not published on this site.
NIT’s coverage of pertinent stories seems to be skewed. This site just seems like a place to insult and embellish stories to raise public fury.
How does or would a genteel pavilion help the average Joe in Mason City who has kids on reduced lunch? That is what we need our leadership to ask itself before it does anything. Robin and her kind have the country club. Let’s build an indoor playground for kids at the mall where parents/grandparents can take their kids to play and have a snack when it is cold out so they get a break and the kids get exercise and socialized. It would increase the mall traffic and actually be a good thing for the average person.
If the chamber really wants to do something for Mason City, ask the city council to fix the damn roads. No wonder businesses don’t want to come here. We spend our taxpayer dollars on statues and oversized dice, meanwhile, we have some of the worst roads of any town I’ve been to in the state.
Ms. Anderson = four words: out of control ego
It’s just an empty lot. Sell it to a developer and let him put a small house on it. All it’s doing now is taking up wasted space. Does the library need it? I don’t think so.
I have a solution! Turn the library into a casino, and watch the tax money roll in. Another problem solved
Where does Robin Anderson get these ideas??? A city in debt without jobs definitely needs a bazillion ugly iron statues and a pavillion at the library!
If it wasn’t for the library where would the sex offenders go and be allowed to use the computer next your kid doing his homework…
A library with a coffee and sandwich shop, books throw away I dumpsters. A big chunk of money spent for nothing a few years ago.
It is a big expensive joke.
It’s no wonder the library is in debt. What does it do to bring in any income? It’s like the museum. The city pours money into it for a select few who use it, and just add it to the growing bill for another wasteful taxpayer funded dinosaur. I invite anyone to sit in the library for a few hours and find out how few people actually use it. And why should they be friendly to anyone? Their civil service jobs are locked in. The city gives their union anything they ask for. Too many people getting paid too much for sitting around doing nothing. That should be Mason City’s new slogan.