SEGUIN TWP. – The Seguin Library Board is looking into how to improve safety at the Foley Library.
This following two break-ins this summer and receiving a letter about a suspicious man. The Foley library is in the basement of the Foley Activity Centre. It is most commonly accessed by going down a flight of stairs from the front entrance, although there is a back door.
“My husband, Jim and I (Myrna) have been camping (in the area) for many years and consequently we have used the library for the Internet as well as obtaining our reading material for much of the summer. We use the library facilities every other day,” wrote Myrna Evel in a letter to library board chair John Flynn and township council last month.
This summer, the letter continued, she noticed a man at a computer by the back door whose “appearance and protective body language, around the computer, caused me to have concerns as to what sites he was on.”
One day, Evel continued, the same man was using a different computer and she noticed he was on a “very inappropriate site.”
Banned
Concerned for the safety of staff and for children using the same computer later she broached the issue with staff and the man was consequently banned, but, Evel wrote, “he knows how easily he could slip in without being seen and hurt someone.”
The library board is looking to improve safety at the library given Evel’s concerns and two break-ins this summer.
“We’re very concerned about the safety of all our employees, where they work and that we examine the whole situation. We have held and will be holding more special meetings to deal with the issue to see where we can improve the situation and we’re getting advice from the OPP,” board chair John Flynn said, summing up his response to Evel’s letter.
Safety meeting
The board held a special meeting and brainstormed for ways to improve safety. This includes considering recommendations after an OPP inspection of the library.
“And, these probably include some sort of alarm systems or improvement of our existing systems,” said Flynn. “So, we’ll look at all of that and we’ll be implementing what we think is most effective.”
Safety, though, is also a community effort.
“My advice to people, everyone has a responsibility to listen and watch out for everyone else,” he said last week before the special meeting. “So, certainly, township staff around are around – they have that work place next door, they have fire station next door – they keep an eye on the environs of the library and they check it out when they are there. So people do that as a matter of common sense and judgment. Citizens, if in a city or a town, your office, not just yourselves are looking after that but people around will look after it. We just need to keep that awareness high and if there’s anything specific we need to do that we aren’t doing we have to consider it and do what we have to do.”
The township is looking at replacing the current library in Foley with a new one built in a proposed newly renovated Foley Agricultural Hall.
The Foley Agricultural Society’s members vote on a proposal to give ownership of the facility to the township next week, which, if approved, would see the township apply for grant money for the project.