To the editor:

The Suffolk City Council has expressed a need to replace the downtown Morgan Memorial Library with a larger one.

The North Suffolk Library was built for about $5.2 million. But at the council’s last meeting, members approved borrowing $2.1 million just for the property that will need to be bought and cleared for the project along West Washington Street.

The library plan has somehow expanded to be more than just a library replacement to the point where it will now be a larger building with large Greek pillars and open rooms for all purposes that we taxpayers neither want nor need. The total cost will be $20 million when the building is completed.

Some City Council members have said this building will save the downtown area from further decline and will bring people back into that area.

But the decline in the use of libraries seems to be a result of the Internet. Young people use their smartphones, iPads and other devices to get the information they need.

The $20 million planned for the new library could be used to build another school and give all of the teachers pay raises, rather than just to build another large, pretty building downtown.

Suffolk citizens should call their council members and express their views on this unneeded project.

William H. Harward

Suffolk