Letter to the editor: Library vote hardly a mandate

Yes, Winter Park’s voters approved the bond referendum for a new library – just barely. The 51 percent to 49 percent result was hardly the majority one would want to see to move forward with the largest civic investment in our city in a generation. So, legally, the city could proceed with building a $30 million library adjacent to ML King Park, but it would be more in the spirit of how our community should operate to stop and ask ourselves what might be done to modify the library plan to bring broader support for a new facility.

For our family and friends, renewing the effort to locate a new building in the downtown area would make all the difference. (And, no, we do not believe that the congested 17-92 corridor will ever have the same character or be a part of Winter Park’s downtown.)

On Jan. 28 of this year, the city’s hard-working Visioning Committee released an excellent progress report entitled, “Formulating the Winter Park Vision, A Milestone Summary.” This document, available online http://bit.ly/VisioningProgress, offers potential common ground for opponents and supporters of a new library.

The report, which will be discussed in upcoming meetings in the city’s parks, suggests nine themes for Winter Park’s future, the first two of which are:

Retain our extraordinary village to live, work and play

Plan our future growth based on the mix of neighborhood, village and urban character

Given the support for retaining and strengthening our downtown revealed by the extensive and inclusive visioning process, an attempt should be made to reconcile construction of a new library building with reinforcing the community character people say they want to retain by finding a downtown site for the building. This can be done. Such a plan would produce a 21st century library that would also reinforce the economic, social, historical and cultural values that make Winter Park such an exceptional place to live.

Sincerely,


Robert & Jill Bendick