Library Oversight Committee being formed - August 23

As many of you know by now, the budget from the Mayor's office included funding for site selection and design of a new library in Bellevue. On August 16, Metro Council approved a budget with $800,000 for exactly this.  The next step is the selection of an Oversight Committee. Planning and construction for the new library is expected to take about 2 years to complete. Congratulations, again, to everyone for their hard work and dedication in letting the Mayor and Council know of the local support for a new library in Bellevue. See the complete Westview article by Council Members Crafton, Tygard, Whitson. Mayor's Recommended Budget Includes $800,000 for Bellevue - May 27

Good news!  Your hard work has paid off!  Charlie called to ask me to let you all know that the budget that the Mayor has sent to the Metro Council includes $800,000 allocated for architectural design, site studies and needs analyses.  This process will take about a year so construction funding will be in next year's budget.  Charlie emphasized that none of the money would come from the proposed tax increases.  The next step in the process is that the Council will hold its own budget hearings.  Currently, the Library system is on the schedule for June 14.   Charlie noted that citizen involvement in Bellevue had a big effect on this recommendation because Bellevue received the bulk of the approximately $1.2M recommended for all branch libraries for this purpose. This means that for now we can stop sending emails.  We will soon organize another round of email messages to thank the mayor. So thank you for your hard work so far.  It has obviously made a difference. E-mail Exchange between Lissa Lamb and Mayor Purcell - May 2

Below is a letter that I just received from Mayor Purcell. I am sure that several of us will receive something similar... But, I thought there were interesting facts that might want to be on the site... Lissa ----- Original Message ----- From: "Purcell, Mayor" <mayor.purcell@nashville.gov> To: Lissa Lamb Sent: Monday, May 02, 2005 1:50 PM Subject: re: Bellevue library Ms. Lamb: Thank you for sharing with me your interest in a new Bellevue branch library. I believe as you do, that the Nashville Public Library is an important part of what makes our city a special and attractive place to live. As you may know, there was a very large commitment of capital dollars to the expansion and renovation of library facilities just before I became Mayor, which did not include the Bellevue branch. However, as Mayor, I have worked to get significant increased operational funding for our library system. The operating budget of the Library has moved from $10.7m the year before I became Mayor in 1999, to nearly $18m today, a 60% increase. Capital funding for new city buildings is different from operation funding, but I expect the city to consider these two sets of budgetary needs at the same time. I am scheduled to hold a budget hearing later today, in which the Library board and director will present their operating and capital needs to me. I will then weigh all of the budgetary needs of the city and the available revenues, and make a budget recommendation to the Metro Council on May 25. It is then up to the Metro Council to vote on the city's operating budget and my capital project recommendations. The Metro Council will hold its own budget hearings in June, with final passage of the budget taking place on or before June 30. Thank you again for letting me know that you support a new branch library for Bellevue. Sincerely, Bill Purcell Mayor -----Original Message----- From: Lissa Lamb [mailto:eblamb55@comcast.net] Sent: Monday, May 02, 2005 9:20 AM To: Purcell, Bill (Mayor); Gentry, Howard (Vice Mayor) Cc: carolyn.tucker@lipscomb.edu; White1, Harold (Council Member); Council Members; Nicely, Donna (Library) Subject: Public Facility Improvements May 2, 2005 Mayor Purcell, Vice Mayor Gentry, Metro/Nashville Officials, I am writing once again to urge you to please consider the necessary funding for an expansion of the Bellevue Public Library. With the growth and influx of families into our area of Davidson County, a state of the art COMMUNITY center is a must. In addition, relocating the library facility to the area where growth is concentrated is key. A community library is a public facility offering many venues to an area. An adequate facility in the Bellevue area is desperately lacking at this time. To those who oppose funding a library expansion, I ask if you have taken the opportunity to visit the current Bellevue Library? If you answered yes, then you will completely agree with me that there is definite need for an expansion. You would have also noticed how many Bellevue residents actually visit the library on a weekly basis, and how inadequate the parking is. In addition, it is clearly evident that the facility itself is too small for our growing facility. There is no room for community meetings (i.e. neighborhood homeowner association meetings), no room for research and book groups, and inadequate space for the technology that our community deserves. If you visited the Bellevue Library, you would completely agree with me that there is not even enough room on the bookshelves behind the front counter for all the requests that have been transferred in from other Nashville branch libraries. This leads one to believe that the library is too small to accommodate the needs our families within the Bellevue community. To those city officials that have not visited our library, I urge you to do so. You will plainly see why a library expansion to create more of a community center is so important to our community. While I personally oppose some of the commercial growth within our community, I completely support a facility that gives back to the community. I completely support the expansion of the Bellevue Public Library, and can see no reason why you should not do the same. I am clearly aware that funding is the issue at hand. You should be clearly aware that when a community urges you, our city leaders, to help us make improvements then all work together to make it happen. Approving the available funding for a public facility makes this a win/win situation. Thank you for taking the time to consider my thoughts and for your dedication and service within Davidson County. I ask you to grant the necessary funding for this improvement to Nashville. Sincerely, Lissa Lamb The Personal Touch Works! - April 30

I spent a rewarding hour today handing out flyers in front of the library asking people for support for our e-mail campaign.  I have two regrets.  1) I didn't wear a jacket (it was a tad chilly) and 2) I didn't have more flyers!    I handed out 100 flyers in only one hour.  Granted, I cheated a little by giving the librarian at Gower Elementary 15 or 20 to hand out at school.  I suggested they adopt it as a school project to get the kids involved.  She thought that was great idea so I gave her a handful of flyers.  I also ran into the teacher who got Harpeth Elementary organized, as Charlie mentioned in the March Newsletter below. Best of all, I got to meet more than a few of you who told me you are already on our mailing list and have been sending in your e-mails.  Thanks!  and keep up the good work. Just about every person I approached committed to sending an email, and many thanked me for bringing it to their attention.  So, given the success of this test run, I hope to hear from a few of you willing to do the same.  It's fun and rewarding and well worth spending one hour of your time. Rod Frank Here's a copy of the handout. May News - April 29

This is the last chance we have to influence Metro Council and the Mayor.  It's critically important that they hear from you this month.  The Mayor presents the budget on May 24th.  Please remember to send in your emails and letters this month and to recruit your friends to send in their commets as well.  Asking just one friend to help will make a tremendous difference. You can find this month's talking points on the web site, but feel free to compose your comments from any month's comments.  If there was something you wanted to add but ran out of space before, this is the time to send it in. Let's have a strong showing right now! Councilman Charlie Tygard Talking Points for May April News - March 30

March was a “good news – bad news” month! First, the good news: There were some tremendous letters written – well conceived and written to the March talking points: the Library survey. Council Members are continuing to comment about the Library campaign. Many of you have received responses from Mayor Purcell & various Council Members – always a good sign. Now for the bad news: The numbers of you writing have dropped off – for whatever reason, the volume of letters is decreasing, not increasing as we had hoped. I implore you – everyone needs to recruit one more person to write a letter in April, May & June – only 3 more months!!!!! You may direct potential recruits to the “newbellevuelibrary.org” web page to “subscribe” to the program, get the instructions on how to mail and receive the monthly talking points. Good luck & good writing!!!! Remember – try & recruit 1 more person to help us these last 3 months !!!!!!!! Councilman Charlie Tygard Talking Points for April Councilman Tygard's complete April Newsletter Local Print Media give New Bellevue Library publicity - February 28

Eric Crafton, in his weekly WestView article on February 23rd, writes an open letter to the Metro Council regarding funding for a new Bellevue Library. In an article about funding requests by the Nashville Public Library, The City Paper reports on February 17th, "Meanwhile, NPL will request that about $8.2 million be included in Metro’s 2005-06 Capital Improvements Budget for construction of a new Bellevue library." See, "Downtown library plans wireless access." On February 10th, the City Paper ran an article. "Bellevue makes room for library", authored by Bill Harless, concerning the development of Harpeth Village between Highway 100 and Old Harding off of the new Temple Road interection.  Featured prominantly in the article is discussion about the possibility of the developer donating land for a new libarary. See our Related Links page for an archive of online news articles. March News - February 27

“A Great Community Deserves a Great Library” Campaign What an exciting February it was! Our letter-writing campaign to the Mayor & Metro Council has been noticed – several Council Members have commented to Eric Crafton, Chris Whitson and myself that they are ready to vote for full funding for a new Library just to keep from having to read all the emails and letters! This was exactly our goal when we started – generate enough correspondence to demonstrate the importance and need for our new Library. On Friday, I visited Harpeth Valley Elementary School to visit with the 4th grade classes. They have adopted the new Library as a school project. Tomorrow (Monday, Feb. 28th), I will be visiting with Mayor Purcell and will be personally delivering over 100 letters written by these gifted, and committed, children. As Art Linkletter used to say – “kids can say the darndest things.” These letters, written without knowledge or care of political correctness, get to the heart of the matter – “Mr. Mayor, how can we be the best students we can be without a decent Library?” On the downside, some of our volunteers haven’t fulfilled their commitment – meaning we had several days without letters arriving. Please continue to fulfill your obligation and recruit more volunteers. Our new website – newbellevuelibrary.org – is now operational. On it, you can check for the latest news and communicate among ourselves. I salute Rod Frank for all of his hard work to make this site a reality. Councilman Charlie Tygard Talking Points for March Councilman Tygard's complete March Newsletter February News - January 29

Dear Bellevue Library Supporter: I want to thank all of you again for your attendance last Saturday to discuss the new Bellevue Library “game plan”. With your continued enthusiastic support and follow thru on the letter-writing campaign, I am more confident than ever of our success. As I was meeting in the Courthouse last week with Metro’s Greenways Coordinator on the next leg of that project, Mayor Purcell happened to walk by and commented that I must be working on my favorite project. My reply – “yes, wouldn’t a walking trail connecting the Harpeth River to Nashville’s newest branch library be wonderful!” Rod Frank has obtained the Web name of “newbellevuelibrary.org” for our needs and is in the process of getting it set up. This will be one primary means for us to communicate, such as distributing “bullet points” for March’s letter. This site should be operational soon. Councilman Charlie Tygard Talking Points for February Councilman Tygard's Kickoff Meeting Newsletter Councilman Tygard's February Newsletter

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