August 13th Meeting Minutes

Minutes: August l3, 2007

Randy George chaired the meeting with 12 people in attendance.

Craig Pelkey gave the financial report.

The $20,000 grant has been received.

The Salerno Family has designated the project for memorial donations in memory of their son, Nikolas.

The Funding committee reported of their meetings:

Grant sources have been designated and amounts targeted.

A budget is being prepared

They will be applying for their first grant from MYHOMETOWNHELPER by Sept. 1, 2007.

The design committee reported of their meetings and progress with the architect.

The need to acknowledge donors was discussed and Alyce Bayne will be handling it.

Members of this project will be contacting Peter DeFazio August l4, 2007 at the Monroe Town Meeting. We will introduce ourselves and ask for his support.

Different types of publicity were discussed and will be looked into before next meeting.

Next meeting: September 10, 2007 – 7pm Monroe Firehall

Respectfully submitted

Janet Begg

Tri-County News Article

This week SBLP has been featured in the Tri-County News. They went and talked to our architect, Lori Stephens of Broadleaf Architecture, and got all the latest news about her design process. You can either pick up this week's Tri-County News, or click on this link!
http://www.triwestnews.com/Pages/TCnews3.html

Thanks Tri-County News!

Library Design Sketches from Architect Lori Stephens

Drum Roll Please! Click on this link and you will see the preliminary design of the New Monroe Community Library!

http://www.broadleafarchitecture.com/monroelibrary.htm

Last Night's Meeting (Aug. 13th)

At our August 13^th meeting of SBLP we had four new community members attend and introduce themselves to the group. Each meeting has been this way, with new faces bringing so many new ideas and such enthusiasm. All together, there were 13 of us there last evening. As our group moves forward, we have all become more aware of the importance of this project we have begun. I can’t stress enough how much we need our whole community’s involvement working for a new library. As the old saying goes, “many hands make light work”. We also had a very nice member offer to write our "Thank You" notes and acknowledgments. Thank you Alyce!

On a different note, today a few of us from SBLP went to listen as Peter Defazio spoke and answered questions at the Monroe American Legion Hall. Our goal was to speak to one of his aides about SBLP and just kind of make them aware of our group and what we are doing to get a new library here in Monroe. The aide was very gracious and assured us that Mr. Defazio would be willing to write letters to help with any grants we are applying for. We might just take him up on that offer!

I heard an interesting thing last night at our meeting...and I'm going to go check it out tomorrow. I heard that the South Benton Communities Historical Association Museum is preparing an exhibit featuring none other than our own Historic Depot! The South Benton Communities Historical Association Museum is open on Wednesday afternoons and so I thought I would drop on by tomorrow and get all the details.

South Benton Library Project Meeting this Monday Night

Hello Everyone,

It's time once again for our monthly South Benton Library Project Meeting. It's this Monday evening, Aug. 13th at 7:00 pm at the Monroe Fire Hall. Our Finance/Fundraising Advisory Team has some news for us and we need to plan on doing some publicity in the near future for the New Library. Hope you can make it and once again, we are looking for each of you to bring a friend with you to the meeting. We have a great group of 12 or so community members that have been faithful to come to the meetings each month. I have been personally inviting everyone who comes in to the library this past week to this month's meeting, who can you invite?

I'll see you there!

What Book Got You Hooked?

I found this on "Neat New Stuff I Found This Week".
http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2007.


• What Book Got You Hooked?

http://www2.firstbook.org/whatbook/top50.php



FirstBook, which gives away books to children, asked people to tell them
what book got them hooked on reading. "Over 100,000 people responded.
These are the Top 50 books that got YOU hooked!" No doubt everybody's
answers would be different, which makes this a great topic for
discussions .

Needed: A Bigger Library!

This picture gives you an idea of why we need a bigger library! Just a small portion of the Monroe Fire Hall full of kids is shown here at one of our Summer Reading Programs...doesn't everyone look like they are having fun? Thank goodness we have a compassionate and library loving Fire Chief, Rick Smith, who let us have all our Summer Reading Programs there these past two months. And he currently opens the Fire Hall for our South Benton Library Project meetings each month. Very nice indeed!

Today I would like to let you all know that we have received some very generous grants from some really nice people. Our South Benton Library Project was awarded a $20,000 Planning Grant for Construction from the Wichita Falls Area Foundation in Texas! Also, SBLP was granted $2,000 from the 2007 Long Tom Grange Calendar fund. There is an article in the Aug. 2 Tri-County News http://www.triwestnews.com/index.html , telling about the distribution of this year's calendar funds. We are delighted to be included in this!

Right now, our busy Fundraising Committee members are swiftly working to send in a letter of inquiry asking for approval to apply for a grant from General Mills found here at http://myhometownhelper.com . If anyone knows of another funding avenue, please come in to the library and point me in the right direction! We welcome any ideas...

Architectural Design Teaser!

Today I went to the second meeting with the architect who is designing the new library in Monroe. To me this is probably one of the most exciting aspects of the whole process of the new library. Unveiling the final outcome to the public will be very grand indeed! Being on the design team is one of the perks of being Monroe's Library clerk, I guess...because I am so very humbled by the intellect of everyone else on the team. I am resolved to just be quiet and listen and revel in what we "get" in our new library. Well... I'm quiet now that I asked for a fireplace included in the design! I did! I asked for a fireplace! Not sure we'll get it, but I asked! And now I will just listen. Let me just say on this blog that you will all be WOWed by the architect and the design she is working on. Today she brought us three rough designs, mainly showing how to position the rest of the library in relation to the Depot. The first design was nice. I loved the entrance and how it allowed for a part of the outside wall of the Depot to be showcased. The second design was not really likable to anyone on the team. But the third design. Wow! Loved it right away. And what really is cool is the computer program Lori Stephens, the architect, has. She took us on a virtual tour of the inside of her design. It's just a rough design right now, but it's beautiful. I am just going to tease you with that! Oh, one more thing I will tease you with. You know those two old barns on HWY 99 going toward Corvallis with the cupolas on their roof spans? I think one of them was the old Willamette Egg Farm...? Those old fashioned barn roof tops are being echoed on the roof of the library portion of the design. It's going to be such a striking building to see when you come in to the City of Monroe on HWY 99. Soon, I 'm hoping to post a link to Lori Stephen's webpage where the initial designs will be posted. Keep your eyes out folks!