THE TAKING OF TELLING: Anatomy of the backroom deal

Background:

• Telling Mansion was purchased by the Cuyahoga County Public Library Board 60 years ago and has been used as the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Library for 60 years. Tax dollars paid for maintenance and renovations.
• Telling Mansion is on the National Register of Historic Places and is an Ohio Landmark.
• The Cuyahoga County Public Library never asked the community if it wanted to sell Telling or if it wanted a new library; the Board and Director unilaterally decided to sell Telling Mansion and build a new library.
• AND the Library's own consultants estimated it would cost $5 million to renovate all 3 Telling Mansion buildings and that it will cost $12.6 million to build a new library (building in progress).

Click on this link or the attached document to read the email exchange between the people listed below, starting in January 2011.
Telling Mansion was sold in December 2013.

Sari Feldman, CCPL Director
Andrew Roth, president of Notre Dame College at the time
Sanjiv Kapur, CCPL Board member at the time and current Notre Dame College Board member
Len Calabrese, CCPL Board president at the time.
Mayor Georgine Welo (mayor of South Euclid) is referenced.

The only member missing from this cast of characters is the PUBLIC.

Welo, Feldman, Roth, Calabrese and Kapur privately worked out the plan for the dispossession of Telling from our community, and building a new library that we do not want but that we have to pay for.

I think it is accurate to say that this is a library for Notre Dame.