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Library question is the question
By JON HOORNSTRA
My oldest memory of a direct lesson in practical thinking goes back many years to when I was helping my Dad take care of some mid-winter maintenance at home.
A lot of doors around the house had swelled from the freezing and thawing brought on by midwestern snow and ice. The doors couldn't open or close right.
That prior spring, Dad had shown me the difference between Phillips and flat head screws when replacing fastener clips that held heavy winter storm windows securely in place. Now it was quiz time.
"What kind of screws are those?" he asked, pointing to the upper hinge. I said they were Phillips, "not flat heads, right?"
"That's right," he said, "so we know we'll need a Phillips screwdriver. Get one from the tool box."
He was a typical dad and he took good advantage to use our door project as an allegory for life's larger problem-solving situations.
"Only if you ask the right question is the right answer possible," he said, "and you must have the right tool for each task. Otherwise you do it badly or not at all."
So a question labeled "Measure A" will appear on voter ballots in Cupertino next month. It concerns our aging library and shares space with 20 other propositions, not to mention presidential questions. Whether or not Measure A asks the right question remains to be seen. This is how it reads:
"In order to construct a new library, without increasing taxes, shall the City Council spend an amount not to exceed $22 million from a combination of cash reserves and public financing? The new library will provide: more space for books, reference materials and computers; separate areas for children activities, community meetings, and quiet reading; improved access to rest rooms and book stacks for the disabled; safe parking for library patrons and the community."
It's a fascinating question: 36 words to pose the question--should the city spend up to $22 million for a new library--and 37 words pitch the benefits, including "safe parking."
The benefits portion of the question captures the scent of a vacuum cleaner sale, what with the reference to "safe parking" and easy access to bathrooms. Absent that, would we expect unsafe parking and hard to get to bathrooms? But the question presumes a new structure, not a refurbished or expanded one. By so phrasing it, the alternatives disappear from consideration.
If you vote yes, you should expect safe parking, spiffy bathrooms and a separate place for noisy kids. But you lose the high ground to challenge the city if it spends every dollar of the $22 million cited.
Although a majority "yes" vote is only advisory, it opens the door for city hall to move toward a grand new structure.
Last fall, the city paid $15,460 to Godbe Research and Analysis of Half Moon Bay to survey 400 residents about the library. The December 1999 issue of the city publication, "Cupertino Scene," says 80 percent of those surveyed said the library should be expanded in some way and 60 percent believed the expansion should "take the form of a new building."
Four hundred people seems a bit small for advice on a $22 million decision. We know little about that survey group and possibly less about real users of the present building.
No formal demographic survey has ever been done of library patrons, the actual users of the building. We don't know what percentage are preschoolers, what percentage are of an elementary or high school age. We don't know what percentage are adults and how many use the library for business or leisure reading.
Voter pamphlets and sample ballots are in the mail to Cupertino's 23,355 registered voters. Regardless of how they vote, the city council has yet to ask a lot of "right questions." Right answers aren't possible unless they are asked. And answered.
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Cupertino, California Since 1947
