We here at DCist are all about community development, and certainly the knowledge contained in our public libraries is a valuable resource that should be kept well maintained and freely available. Reading is FUNdamental, no? We just wish that for once, a government task force could report back to the mayor without bringing along a nine-digit number. The latest to issue a draft report thusly was the Mayor’s task force on D.C.’s public libraries, which called in its draft report for a near complete overhaul, to the tune of $450 million. Among the task force’s recommendations is the replacement of the flagship building, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, designed by Mies Van Der Rohe, with a new structure located in the old convention center development and costing an estimated $280 million. Other suggestions are for more books and computers; no source of funding has yet been identified.

City, Baseball in Mediation: With the contractual deadline for signing the stadium lease more than two weeks in the past, Major League Baseball asked and city officials agreed to enter into mediation in an attempt to resolve the impasse over the stadium lease. Given the intractability over the issue, it’s unclear what the designated mediator, Dennis Archer, a former Detroit mayor, could recommend, but he has 15 days to give it his best shot before the parties likely move to binding arbitration, a process the Washington Times describes as “longer, more costly and confrontational.” As opposed to the rest of the stadium negotiations.

That’s the Ticket: A man who used to work for D.C. Public School Transportation has been sentenced to 18 months in jail and fined $30,000 for restitution after bribing a teller in the D.C. Bureau of Traffic Adjudication to get her to fix traffic tickets. The teller was sentenced in November to a similar jail term with $200,000 in restitution ordered.

Briefly Noted: WTOP releases Rosenbaum 911 call…Walter Reed being divvied…Happy Windsday…Williams taping Iron Chef episode today…City preparing for DCist Happy Hour, aftermath.

Picture taken by ohad*.

Filed Under: As, baseball, books, Briefly Noted, city, community development, computers, convention, convention center, dcist, DCist Happy Hour, detroit, government, happy hour, Iron Chef, Jr., library, Major League, major league baseball, Martin Luther, martin luther king, mayor, Memorial Library, news, photos, public libraries, public school, reading, traffic, transportation, walter reed, walterreed, washington, washington times,