Statement before                    Glenn A. Walsh

Pittsburgh City Council --          P.O. Box 1041

    Carnegie Library                          Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15230-1041 U.S.A.

Ignores                                           Telephone: 412-561-7876

  Right-to-Know Law                         Electronic Mail: < gawalsh@andrewcarnegie.cc >

Requests                                       Internet Web Site: < http://www.andrewcarnegie.cc >

                                                                                2003 December 16

 

Good morning. I am Glenn A. Walsh of 633 Royce Avenue, Mount Lebanon. Today, I am representing no formal organization.

 

As I told you last month, I mailed a letter to Carnegie Library President Ellsworth Brown, asking that The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh comply with the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act and the Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Law, as required by Title 22 of the Pennsylvania Code. Included in the letter were two Right-to-Know Law requests. The certified mail card, returned to me, indicates that Mr. Brown’s office received the letter on November 20.

 

As you may know, a recent amendment to the Right-to-Know Law requires that replies to such requests be made within five business days. As of December 15, I had received no reply from Carnegie Library. Hence, today I sent a second request, by restricted delivery, asking for the same information under the Right-to-Know Law:

 

1)       A copy of the minutes of the Library Board meeting which approved a lease for the proposed new Hazelwood Library site;

2)       A copy of the executed lease agreement for the proposed new Hazelwood Library site.

 

In today’s letter, I included five more Right-to-Know Law requests:

 

1)       The date, time, and location of the next Library Board meeting, and the schedule of 2004 meetings;

2)       The newspaper(s) Carnegie Library will use to legally advertise their Board meetings;

3)       The exact location in the Main Branch where Board meeting notices will be posted;

4)       A copy of the “strategic planning document” used to justify the abandonment of historic Andrew Carnegie-built library branches;

5)       Statistical information, for each of the last ten years, regarding the Hazelwood Branch Library.

 

A copy of the December 15 letter to Ellsworth Brown, in its entirety, is included with this statement.

 

As I stated in the last sentence of my letter, “It is my hope that The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh understands the importance of voluntarily complying with the Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Law and Pennsylvania Sunshine Act.”

 

Thank you.

 

gaw