by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
Former Sartell Mayor Joe Perske urged the city council to move ahead swiftly with plans for a branch library in the city.
Perske spoke during the Open Forum session before the last council meeting, May 26.
He said the council should not lose focus that a branch library has consistently been at or near the top of the list of what Sartell residents want to see built with regional sales-tax revenue.
After the Bernick’s Arena was built, partly with the help of city sales-tax money, the second phase of sales-tax money projects was supposed to include a library, Perske said. The library plans, he added, never materialized.
The Great River Regional Library system has agreed to partner with Sartell to staff and maintain a branch library. Sartell, Perske said, is the largest of cities in Minnesota without a library. Even smaller cities like Upsala and Grey Eagle have libraries while Sartell does not. Residents have to go to the St. Cloud Library or the Waite Park branch library or somewhere else, Perske noted, even though Sartell contributes, indirectly, about $250,000 per year to the GRRL system. That amount of money is an estimate because it’s the counties that give money to the GRRL system (in Sartell’s case, the counties of Benton, Stearns). Thus, the $250,000 is an estimate by Sartell city staff of residents’ tax dollars paid to the counties that go for the GRRL system.
Perske said plans for a community-resource facility (community center) should include a library as one of its top priorities.
“Time moves on,” Perske said. “ . . . Let’s move it (library plan) forward.”