Tom Gordon Calls Take Backs on Secrecy for Denmark Trips
Over the weekend, the Gordon Administration started releasing some details in the planned trip to Denmark for a library tour by the Community Services Manager and an Administrative Librarian. The NJ article now has some estimates of the cost of the trip for two people and the planned dates of travel. There’s also some estimates of the costs of previous trips. The NJ is still pursuing its FOIA request for this data. Still — it’s all so much bull:
Some council members said they had never been briefed on the project. When they were finally given details last week, the Denmark trip was left out of the presentation. One council member happened to ask about it because he had heard a rumor.
“They all knew the principle behind this, which was to design the best library in the country,” Gordon said of council. “To attack that, it looks like we’re fighting and hurts our ability to attract more partners.”
Got that? There’s a fair bit of daylight between briefing the County Council on a major capital project and understanding its principles. And I’d expect that if everyone knew the principles behind this project that this question of fact-finding trips wouldn’t be such an issue. As seems to be a very destructive habit by Gordon, some folks on County Council get to know about what is planned and others do not. So he continues to be bitten here by his own management style here. Because the people who continue to not be in the loop are the people who continue to make Gordon look like a dyslexic reader of Sun Tzu. Those left out can always provide a perspective to the media that the Gordon Administration is not transparent, so that they are fighting over transparency rather than the project. It’s the blind side of the authoritarian, right?
It doesn’t help that Jea Street takes to the paper to get his victim on:
Councilman Jea Street agreed. He said he views the questions about the travel costs are signs of a hidden agenda of opposition to the library by some of his colleagues.
“It’s clear that there will be a fight until completion,” he said.
Note to Jea — people like libraries and when they can be paid for, they are a fairly easy capital project. No one is fighting the library, they are fighting Gordon’s high school management style (I talk to YOU and I don’t talk to YOU) and they are doing what they should be doing — questioning the circumstances and price tag of how this comes into being. Tom Gordon may be telling Street and Bullock that we spend whatever it takes — they still have to face a County Council who does manage the purse strings. And going as far as Denmark to tour a library isn’t about fact-finding at this point — it is about buying some credibility. When they roll this out, they want to claim that this is state-of-the-art or state-of-the-practice and they’ll want to point to where it is being done in other places as evidence of that. Which pretty much papers over the fact that there isn’t a formal needs assessment that exists to support all of this “fact-finding”.
So here’s a question to the OG Gordon watchers — how does the evolution of the building of the library parallel how the PALs came about?
Tags: Bamboozled!, Featured, NCCo Council, Tom Gordon
Here’s a link, I just saved NCC taxpayers a bundle:
http://www.copenhagenet.dk/CPH-Libraries.htm
Each library offers a virtual tour, too.
Gordon just wants a junket. He’s still a disgrace.
Anon,
You are a patriot. Thanks for saving us all that money.
What also needs to be addressed here is the claim that this will be “the best [fill in the blank] in the country.”
You know what? We don’t need the best in the country, and given our low rate of taxation and Gordon’s refusal to ever raise taxes (he prefers to spend the county’s sewer funds, which he insists on calling a “surplus,” instead), we frankly don’t deserve the best of anything.
Jea Street is a whore, and a not particularly admirable one. And I’m being charitable here, because I think he’s actually a piece of shit.
This is not the county government’s job, it is the state’s. Gordon’s monomaniacal ego is the problem behind his divisive management style.
This smells of so many past boondoggles around Delaware. When the (I believe) DRBA folks had to go to Europe to look at the operation of the ferry boats. When the men from NYC in the $3,000 suits and silk ties tried to tell us that the 7th Street Peninsula would be the next Inner Harbor. When was the last time “Denmark” was even on anybody’s radar for anything? Are we such rubes ,,, oh, forget I asked! And yes, is this to be a library or a social services center?
Something is rotten and it’s not in Denmark : )
I think this could be a good idea. Libraries have to be about more than books and DVDs these days, and if library services could be the hub around which revolve services like job training, recreation, health and nutrition advice and, yes, communicating with inmates, all the better.
Unfortunately, Gordon’s arrogance may have prematurely poisoned the well, and it doesn’t exactly help that his biggest supporters for this project are Bullock and Street, both from the area that would reap the greatest benefit. It may not be a boondoggle (yes — I think this could help meet many community needs) but Tommy and his BFFs are doing their best to make it look like one.
“if library services could be the hub around which revolve services like job training, recreation, health and nutrition advice and, yes, communicating with inmates, all the better.”
Bull. Libraries are not set up to do that, and the county does not run such programs. This is Gordon grandstanding and buying off Jea Street.
if library services could be the hub around which revolve services like job training, recreation, health and nutrition advice and, yes, communicating with inmates, all the better.
These services might not be the norm in Delaware libraries just yet (although 4 Delaware Libraries have Job Centers), but they are in places like Philly, San Francisco, San Antonio, Hartford and so on. It is how libraries are re-inventing themselves to survive.
Whether or not they are needed at this library location might be its own question, but bundling other reference, training and other learning opportunities into libraries is the future of successful library systems.
And the buyoff includes Chris Bullock too.
A library “jobs center” is typically a bank of computers with some printed career guides. Don’t kid yourselves into thinking librarians can take over social services. They have neither the training nor the equipment.
Cassandra is on the right track here.
Libraries are reinventing themselves in Delaware and all over the country, and the model I’ve heard about most is one that transforms them more into community gathering places that focus on packaging learning (and career) opportunities.
SW — ultimately that will mean that “librarians” will be doing some things that they don’t do now, or that “libraries” will hire people to handle tasks that are not currently part of their program.
I don’t see that as bad, but I do see it as change.
I’m generally supportive of creativity in government.
I don’t have a problem with going into a relatively low-income community and bundling services not currently available to them in a way that will provide fresh opportunities for them to increase their knowledge and improve their access to better jobs.
I do have a problem with lack of transparency, and with my-way-or-the-highway managers. Gordon will have an easier time dealing with transparency issues than with adjusting his management style, so I will remain skeptical of this project until all the cards are laid out before the entire county council and the public at large.
But let’s not trash this project because it doesn’t look like the type of library that we’ve grown to know and love or, conversely, because it looks like the next great thing and Gordon wants to put it in one of the county’s poorer neighborhoods instead of in Hockessin or Brandywine Hundred.
My point was that people should approach this with a cupful of salt. You cannot take a conventional library building, staff and director and expect them to become a social services hub to cure all that ails humanity. Pursuing that type of plan will require a substantial investment in personnel far above and beyond a traditional library. Having the right building and meeting spaces and tablet computers is only a small part of getting an operation like that up and running.
I don’t see this as necessarily being a conventional library building, hence the look at a Denmark model. Nor must everything else about the library be conventional. Partnerships with state agencies/private initiatives can take the place of additional staff.
In fact, what I’ll be looking for will be deviations from ‘conventional’ models. Creative alliances, citizen involvement, no political favors or paybacks.
I agree that healthy skepticism is warranted. But I see this potentially as a model for genuine progress. I also agree that this type of approach is out of character with what Gordon has been known for.
My mantra: “Don’t trust, but verify.”
Can someone in the know fill us lesser mortals in on the PAL situation?
SW, I don’t know all the details, but it had something to do with Tom Gordon benefiting … Tom Gordon. It’s strange that there is a PAL Center in Hockessin, which really doesn’t have too many “at-risk” children, unless they are at risk of not getting a new car when they turn 16.
When the Acme in Claymont closed several years ago and the building was sitting vacant, I called the county and suggested they put a PAL center there. Young people in my community could sure use a place that holds activities and programs for them. I was about laughed off the phone. Yet, a year or two later, the center opened in Hockessin.
There is some background at http://delawarewatch.blogspot.com/2005/10/delaware-pal-stinks.html
After all the only thing holding back some people is limited access to a library so lets tear them down and build bigger better ones. Anyone under 30 and over 10 years old even seen the inside of one of these new libraries. They might be an outmoded way of disseminating information?
A. Mike: Sadly, they most significant thing I recall about the Hockessin PAL is that there were problems with the financing, as in not enough of it.
Libraries don’t disseminate information, they collect, organize, and share information. They are indispensable to civilization. Librarians may not be social workers, but they don’t do poorly. They aren’t too proud to look it up.
Point of order
It’s just that in todays world there may be a more cost effective way of doing it. As far as being indispensable to civilization, who really is?
I don’t think Gordon gives a shit about all of that. It is a simple Edifice Complex.