For about two hours on Tuesday evening, the Belleville Area District Library Board listened to members of the community tell the board they wanted the library site to remain in downtown Belleville.
About 20 people filled the small meeting room. They gave their thoughts on the issue for about two hours.
There are three library sites that are finalists of the 16 sites the board said it considered. While the board members announced they are looking at all three sites, the architect has said many times that the DNR lakeside site on the north side of the Belleville Bridge is the preferred site with the most possibilities.
Belleville attorney Barbara Miller presented ten petitions carrying a total of 140 names asking the board to keep the library downtown and consider using the Grace Baptist Church site across from Horizon Park and the lake.
Miller said she prepared the petitions after the recent public forum on the site selection process and the signatures were collected in just a few hours. By the Monday after the Thursday forum, Miller said she almost died from a blood clot and was in the hospital – interrupting her petition project.
She reminded the board that the Belleville Downtown Development Authority members – including the mayor — voted unanimously to ask the board to keep the library in downtown Belleville.
[The Belleville City Council has the issue on its agenda for Aug. 15 to see if it wishes to take a stand on the library site.]Miller said DDA member Ken Voigt will be asking the DDA for an economic impact study to determine how moving the library would impact the city. She said it was such a study that kept the county from shutting down the Belleville Bridge completely for 18 months when it was being rebuilt.
“It would have destroyed the community,” Miller said of what would have happened if the bridge had closed.
Van Buren Township resident Kevin Robinson questioned the 47,000-square-foot size of the proposed new library. He suggested “reeling in” the size to something that taxpayers could support.
Robinson challenged the board to think and spend like it was their own personal money being spent.
Belleville resident Mike Renaud also questioned the 47,000 square foot size that was determined after a 2005 study.
Mike Windiate, Mike Foley, and Jane Vesche, all in business in Belleville for more than 20 years, supported the downtown site.
After all the discussion was over, the board emphasized it is still in the early stages of site selection, with lots of information yet to gather.
The board then went into closed-door session to discuss the site and do a scheduled evaluation of the library director.