U R Doin it wrong. (hmdb.com)

Elected officials don't have to be corrupt for citizens to lose confidence in them. They can sometimes just not have their priorities straight. Here are a couple examples from recent days:

1. Getting rid of a swath of special purpose funds. Michael Neibauer reported last week that the 2011 and 2012 budgets yanked more than $1.5 million total from a green building fund generated by charging 0.002 cents per square foot on all construction permit fees. The fund was supposed to pay for technical assistance, training, and outreach around the District's green building laws, but no staff have been hired, perhaps because there's no telling whether the money will actually be there next year to pay their salaries.

The other problem is that, like the attempt to divert the bag tax proceeds to something unrelated to Anacostia River cleanup, breaking these kinds of budget promises sours people on paying taxes in the first place. "It’s easy to understand why many developers now view the green building fee as nothing more than a general tax on their projects," Neibauer writes.

If the green building fund is truly necessary, it should be used for its intended purposes. If not, it should be abolished—or perhaps folded into another tax—not used as a slush fund.

2. Not using public facilities that provide essential services for lack of relatively low operational costs. The Council's inability to find what Tommy Wells says is $320,000 to keep the Martin Luther King Library open for even five hours on Sundays is a travesty. As the Post describes today, it's one of the most important times of week for people who need to do homework or research, look for jobs, or just watch Redskins games. The District already has a third place problem, and all of the branch libraries—even the pricey new ones—already lie dormant on Sundays. At least one safe haven and resource center should be open every day of the week, and for elected leaders to not recognize that essential function of government reflects a pretty poor sense of what's really important.

Now, I'm not certain that EastBanc isn't bilking the District with all those incidentals. But it's worth noting that $9 million is a bargain as far as District Libraries are concerned. Most of the new libraries are about the same size as the planned West End, at more or less 20,000 square feet. But they're all more expensive. Here are the totals, via DCPL:

Watha T. Daniel/Shaw: $15 million

Anacostia: $14.7 million

Francis Gregory: $13.4 million

Tenley/Friendship: $16.1 million

Benning: $15.7 million

Washington Highlands: $15 million

The historic renovations, including Petworth, Georgetown, Takoma Park, and Mt. Pleasant, are in that range as well (though Georgetown tops them all, at $22 million).

(Alex Burchfield)

After years of planning, contract negotiation, and construction, the Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Library will finally open its doors on August 2. It’s the fourth of six new and renovated libraries to open this year—but this one, a triangular shard of glass projecting over the corner of Rhode Island Ave. and 7th Street, NW, may be the most striking achievement yet.

The mastermind of the Library’s building blitz, Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper, toured Housing Complex around the soon-to-open facility yesterday, along with branch manager Eric Riley and Jeff Bonvechio, director of 21st Century Capital Projects. Cooper, who spent many of her 30-year library career at the Brooklyn Public Library, has an infectious enthusiasm. And it’s hard not to, just from the scale of the place: Sitting on a portion of land that would barely accommodate two modestly sized houses, the library has packed in 22,000 square feet of floor space on three levels, and can hold up to 80,000 books and audio/visual materials.

Aesthetically and technically, the building is a modern masterpiece. Designed by Davis Brody Bond Aedas, it’ll cost an estimated $11.8 million dollars to finish. The veneer of the north-facing wall is built with opaque glass, with windows for the study rooms on the second floor. The south wall is covered with a sheet of metal scrim, which is used for “daylight harvesting,” allowing an optimal amount of light to enter the building to control the temperature. Standing outside and looking up at the second floor, you can see only see a solid metal sheet. But looking outside from within, the scrim is transparent. Filling out the enviro-features—the library is expected to earn LEEDs Silver certification—the building uses post-consumer waste materials for the carpeting, low emission paints, and an elaborate heating system built into a “raised floor.”

“We are not cooling or heating the space from here up to there,” said Cooper, pointing to the ceiling. “In most cases, what you have in older buildings is [the air will] come from the top and blow down. You’re spending a lot of energy to make sure that the area from 10 to 20 ft is the right temperature, which is not the case in this building.”

As we skirted around construction workers and strewn boxes of supplies, the aura of a library began to sink in. Cooper talked about how excited she was to finally see books on the shelves, and branch manager Riley pointed out the different genre sections, including urban fiction, graphic novels, young adult fiction, reference books and a Spanish collection; Housing Complex spotted an encyclopedia of philosophy displayed prominently on one shelf.

The collection will start out at about half-capacity, with around only 40,000 items. Since the original Shaw library closed in 2004, half of the collection remained in a 4,200 square foot interim library, which Riley managed single-handedly for three years. The other half remained in a stockpile in the original location. But Cooper and her team plan to continue expanding, buying books from the same wholesalers that sell to companies like Barnes and Noble and Borders.

“We’re building a fairly complex collection when we open this library,” said Cooper. “One that takes into account both what kids are going to need for school, homework and current materials. I don’t think you’ll find any, ‘some man walks on the moon someday,’ stories.”

But books may not be the most important feature for library patrons. The 32 public access computers and free Wi-Fi are vital resources for residents of a neighborhood where many do not have Internet access.  Along with a community room, two conference rooms and five study rooms, Cooper’s team envisages a place where people will gather to learn, listen and bond in an environment that suits their needs.

“Libraries of all kinds, in particular these beautiful new ones, are the way that government says to people in this neighborhood, ‘you are important. See how this is? This is yours and you have built this for you.’ And that sense of pride and ownership is really what’s valuable.”

The new Francis Gregory, temporarily out $3 million. (Rendering from DCPL)

Last Friday, the Business Journal reported that Councilmember Harry Thomas had scrounged up $3 million from the Library capital budget to pay for stormwater management on the site of a huge new development at the intersection of New York and South Dakota Avenues, in his own Ward 5. That's on top of an expected increase of TIF financing from $10 million to $15 million, bringing the grand total of city investment to $18 million. Costco has promised to locate there, and tax revenues are expected to make up the subsidy within a few years.

But where did that $3 million come from? Today, we learn that it's temporarily on loan from the construction budget for the Francis Gregory Library in Ward 7, which closed on April 15 (the interim location opens May 10). A DCPL spokesman tells us that the construction schedule will not be affected, and that the new Francis Gregory is still on track to open in Spring 2011.

Well today there is progress on one front. The groundbreaking for the new Benning Library was scheduled for 3:15 this afternoon. The new two-story library will be 24,000 square feet with "multiple meeting spaces for community use" and "at least 30 public access computers, including a mobile laptop cart that can be used for computer literacy training classes," according to DCPL's website. The library plans to apply for LEED certification of at least “Silver” for this building.

Earlier today, Robin Diener with the D.C. Library Renaissance Program sent out this press release:

Groundbreaking at last for New Benning Library in NE

WASHINGTON, DC – December 1, 2008 –Mayor Adrian Fenty and officials of the DC Public Library are scheduled to break ground today for the long awaited new Benning Library. More than four years in the making, Benning is scheduled to be rebuilt by 2010 along with three other neighborhood libraries, closed since 2004: Anacostia, Watha T. Daniel/Shaw and Tenley.

Residents hope the new library will help address issues of special concern to Ward 7, such as low adult literacy, high drop out rates, and the deep digital divide. DC Public Library planning processes, however, left many feeling that their requests for classroom space, computers training labs, and adult literacy programming had not been adequately addressed.

Since the Board of Library Trustees canceled the original plans for rebuilding in 2004, problems have beleaguered the redesign. The community was without a promised interim library facility for more than two years. Once the interim facility in Benning opened, it proved to be the most frequently used of the four. In July 2007, the local ANC sued the Library for failure to give notice to the ANC. That suit was settled a year ago.