Thanks for coming out to meet with the West End neighborhood to listen to our story. As a career government bureaucrat, I appreciate and understand your financial challenges. I trust your planning process will be thorough and will include every element of library operations - an open, heartfelt examination, not an exercise with a pre-determined outcome. I'd like to make a few simple points.

1. The Reiche Library is a great place. It's gotten better and better over the years. While it may not be reflected in material "circulation" numbers, my observation is that the number of people using the library has increased dramatically. This is in spite of terrible signage, a hidden location and seemingly ever-changing hours. Reiche is the hardest working public library in America at hiding and disguising its existence.
2. But Reiche is really special in it own way and different than any other place or space in our community - and by community I mean both the West End and the entire City.
3. The Reiche Library brings together everyone in one small room. Adults and children, neighbors and newcomers, those of all income levels and people of many, many, varied life stories - particularly people whose families are new to America, engaging with those whose families arrived somewhat earlier.
4. This is the only place where this interaction occurs regularly and informally - and it occurs around something everyone can relate to: books and reading. There needs to be more opportunities for this, not fewer.
5. I've lived in the neighborhood for almost 30 years, most of my adult life. The West End has improved dramatically in every way. When I arrived, the City and the neighborhood were much poorer. It was a much less desirable place. Families were fleeing to outlying neighborhoods and communities. But somehow we could afford a library at Reiche. It feels tragically ironic that as we've steadily improved our overall community well-being and Reiche's campus and building are being reborn, that now our life in literature and learning may be diminished.
6. I don't think this should necessarily be about numbers but in any event, I'll provide some.

   Reiche	catchment area of census tracts 11, 12, 13	7,500 pop.
   East End	catchment area of census tract 1, 2, 5	7,000 pop.
   Peaks Island	census tract 24 minus Long Island	1,000 pop.
   	As an aside, Long Island with a population of 200 has a fabulous library - larger and, I dare say, better stocked than Reiche.
   Adding the portion of census tract 10 south of Congress Street to the Reiche catchment area and subtracting from the East End catchment the portion of census tract 5 in East Bayside close to downtown (plus the factor of climbing the hill), the catchment population differential between Reiche and East End increases.
   Distance to the Main Library:	Reiche - .7 miles
   	East End - 1.3 miles (Adams School was 1.0 miles)
   	Casco Bay Lines Terminal - .7 miles (I bring up the CBL Terminal location because I believe it's the rare Peaks Islander that doesn't venture to Portland with regularity.
   So the distance argument is pretty modest. All three of these branches are not particularly far from the Main Library. That's not the issue.

Reiche is findamentally different from the Main Library and must be considered for all it uniquely is - certainly not through the thoroughly simplistic lens, demeaning this wonderfully special place, as merely a locus of material circulation. Credit for much of the great activity, the "buzz" that permeates the Reiche Library should rightfully go to our librarians Stephanie and Michael. They're doing a fabulous job and deserve our recognition and praise.

The Reiche Library is an integral part of what makes the West End a great neighborhood and what makes Portland a great city. There's nothing we can build for $8 million or $80 million on Monument Square that will do what Reiche does so well, in only a few hours each week.