We already have an express library in downtown, and as someone who visits there often, I can vouch that it is not a concentrated area of mentally ill persons, homeless persons, or drug addicts. I have taken my eight-year-old daughter there (the girl on my shoulders in my avatar is eight now, y’all), and we have felt completely safe at all times. In fact, I have taken myself and my family to many of the Wake County Public Library’s 23 locations, and I have never once felt even the tiniest bit unsafe or encountered even a single problem from other users. It’s hard to fathom how opening a new location with more books, more space, more computers and better programming for children would cause the patronage of the downtown library to suddenly and dramatically change for the worse.
Look, folks: I can tell from the comments that some of you do not spend any time at the Wake County Public Libraries. You are all free to walk into any location in the county and see that your imagination about what public libraries must be like is completely at odds with what you experience if you actually visit one.