by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
Two people, both members of Friends of the Library, spoke in favor of a Sartell library and one person sang the praises of the proposed Sartell Community Center during the public forum session of the Dec. 14 Sartell City Council meeting.
Kevin Gross, the president of the Sartell Area Youth Basketball Association, thanked the city council for its decision to build a three-gym community center in the city, saying parents and athletes will not mind driving extra miles within the city to avail themselves of such a facility.
He said he and others are “truly grateful” for such an “incredible endeavor.”
There has long been a need for more gym space in Sartell, Gross said, adding many children have to go to gyms in other cities just to practice, sometimes late at night because gyms are so busy, and not just for basketball but for other indoor sports. Some even have to practice in cafeterias after hours, he noted.
The three gyms in the Sartell Community Center will be a huge help, he said.
“Thank you . . . It is an amazing asset for Sartell.”
Friends of the Library members Zurya Anjum and Henry Smoryinski, both of whom have spoken at previous council meetings, each read a letter addressed to the council.
Anjum’s letter was basically a response to accusations made in an anonymous letter published as a submitted paid insert in the Sartell Newsleader. Entitled “Enough is Enough,” it was submitted and paid for by “Friends of the Sartell Community,” and criticized those who oppose the planned community center because it will not contain a library.
Anjum said the paid letter contained “distortions of the truth.” She said the Great River Regional Library Board has been more than willing to compromise, including on a site for the community center, but that a majority on the city council has rebuffed those GRRL efforts to communicate and to compromise.
A poll taken in October-November 2015 showed 70 percent of Sartell residents are in favor of a library, Anjum said.
“It appears quite clear to the Sartell residents that although the majority of our city council members keep saying they support a Sartell GRRL library, they are doing all they can to delay/postpone the decision until all the sales-tax money is committed to other projects and there is nothing left.”
Anjum then announced an invitation from Friends of the Library to set up a meeting sometime before the new year with the city council, GRRL representatives and the St. Cloud Times Editorial Board to discuss the library issue and to find a solution.
In his letter to the council, Smoryinski said the council had placed a lump of coal in children’s stockings because a majority on the council had turned a “deaf ear” to children’s request for a Sartell library.
The council majority of three members, he said, made its community-center-without-a-library decision in an uninformed way, without holding adequate public hearings, without updating a public survey, without doing enough research and by excluding input from library supporters and by not responding to the requests of 500 pro-library petitioners.
The council, he said, has not allotted even one dollar of tax money for a library.
“So if things continue, there will be no branch library, and the blame must rest with the council majority, not with GRRL or the residents labeled as whiners who only asked the council to honor votes, voters’ desires and past council promises.”
