ReaderWire ReaderWire (July 15, 2005)

Simpson responds

A recent letter took me to task for "surreptitiously attempting to decimate" the Downtown branch of the Palo Alto City Library.

This is not true.

Some library-support functions are being moved from the Main library to Downtown, to create more public space at Main and make several improvements there, including more space for popular materials and media, and for self-service holds. The public space at Downtown will shrink by an as-yet-undetermined amount in order to house the support staff, but we will keep this workspace to an absolute minimum.

As funding allows, we intend to reinvigorate the services at the Downtown branch to offset the loss of space. Once we know how the public space will be configured, we will hold one or more community meetings for the neighbors around the Downtown branch to share the space plans with them and to solicit their ideas for services and collections.

The same letter accused me of "relentlessly ... pushing" "a grandiose showplace library."

This is patently untrue.

I do recommend a full-service, headquarters library supporting the existing branch libraries. I have suggested that it be aesthetically pleasing, energy-efficient and green, with capacity for collection growth and in keeping with the character of Palo Alto.

Hardly the definition of a grandiose showplace.

It's understandable that some people are suspicious of changes in the library, given the many times over the past two decades that library leaders, facing insufficient funding to support the current service model, have advocated fewer library facilities. In my case, I received clear direction from the City Council last December: Palo Alto's five branch libraries will remain.

I take that direction very seriously. I am committed to reversing the deterioration of our library, which consists of all five branches, and putting it on a course to excellence. Let's all work together to achieve this goal.
Paula Simpson
Director, Palo Alto City Library
Forest Avenue, Palo Alto

Shameful seniors

Thanks to the Weekly for the story about the seniors who voted for the school tax and now exempt themselves from paying it (July 8).

What a low, contemptible, despicable thing to do. They ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
Dave Hood
Fife Avenue, Palo Alto

Fiber for the future

"Build it and they will come" was Kevin Costner's mantra in "Field of Dreams." This sentiment must have launched a thousand startups in the late '90s; most of them went broke when nobody came.

The fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) project has been promoted on a similar premise: Fiber was so compelling that it would create its own applications, not simply telephone, TV and Internet. But what?

Looking at the city's business plan, we see telephone, TV and Internet. The telephone service described was, well, telephone. Someone dubbed the cable TV service "Comcast lite." The Internet service -- where you would expect to see a difference -- was similar to services already available.

Meanwhile, the communications companies are busy. Comcast rebuilt their plant and added new services; SBC is working on a fiber plan; and DirecTV is launching new satellites to carry local HDTV.

This is a competitive and risky business, with many losers. Cablevision's Voom HDTV service -- the darling of early adopters -- recently closed after failing to break into a crowded marketplace.

The problem with the FTTH plan is that the services do not yet exist that can take advantage of the fiber. I suspect that we will see FTTH (or something better) in a few years, evolving along with new services.

Meanwhile, we can help. Palo Alto needs to sit down with communications providers (cable TV, telephone, cell phone) and ask them what we can do to make it easier for them to build the future here. We need to co-operate.
Robert Smith
Greer Road, Palo Alto

Avoid foolish bail out

I can't believe Palo Alto would be so short-sighted as to stop fiber-to-the-home. It is rock solid. It never, ever, goes down.

It is fast. Faster than my T1 at the office.

It is 100 percent reliable. Always. For as long as we have had it.

I've had it with Comcast and its sleazy "specials," raising the price and never having a real person on the other end of an endless menu of telephone options. I would far prefer to pay my bill to my community.

If we as a community could make this investment, our personal phone, cable and Internet access could be merged into a single bill for less than the cost of our SBC/Comcast or Dish/Internet access. We would be investing in our community -- and our future home values.

To bail out now, after the extremely successful trials, would be foolish and stupid.
Nancy Crewdson
Waverley Street, Palo Alto

E-mail a friend a link to this story.