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To: County Executive Brenton Davis, and County Council members

Keep Our Library Public

Let the  County Executive Brenton Davis, the County Council members know that leasing part of the Blasco Library to Gannon -- a private, religious university -- is illegal, unethical, and a violation of their duties to taxpayers and the public trust.

Keep Our Library Public (KOLP) has filed a legal complaint in the Erie County Court of Common Pleas to prevent 3200 square feet of Blasco Erie County Public Library in Erie County, PA from being leased to a tax-exempt, private, religious university. 

Sign here to get updates about our lawsuit to void this lease.

Please DONATE to support our lawsuit: https://www.fundlibraries.org/erie
Donations are tax deductible.  

Why is this important?

Erie County Executive Brenton Davis and some members of the County Council have wrongly entered into a lease agreement with Gannon University, a private, religious, tax-exempt institution without input or approval from taxpayers.  The lease grants Gannon the takeover of 3200 square feet as well as access to substantial portions of the only public library located within the City of Erie—the Raymond M. Blasco Memorial Library.  

Members and supporters of “Keep our Library Public” (KOLP) span all ages, genders, incomes, backgrounds, and political affiliations.  We live and pay taxes in municipalities throughout Erie County.  We believe our elected officials should carry out their official duties openly, responsibly, and with reasonable input from their constituents—the residents and taxpayers of Erie County.   

But over and over again, our elected officials, the Bishop of the Erie Diocese, and the Gannon University administration, have ignored the voices of library users and hardworking taxpayers. The past County Council Chairman denied our right to speak at a December 2023 public meeting, and even had people removed from that meeting. 
 
Sign and share this petition to tell our elected leaders to listen to taxpayers, keep our public library public, and cancel the lease immediately. 

Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States

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Links

Campaign Website

Updates

2025-04-09 13:59:01 -0400

Just Sit Right Back and You’ll Hear a Tale…
of how Gannon’s Project NetPTWNE needs access to the water–according to Gannon and the county executive. However, Gannon’s ship isn’t even in the water. It’s dry docked and has been for some time.
No offense to Gilligan and the Skipper, but the Environaut is looking like the S.S. Minnow. And at least one faculty member would rather work on campus than in the Blasco Library–the project being called the Great Lakes Education and Research Center back in August 2024, since re-named (more on that in a future post). The argument that Gannon needs a waterfront location for Project NepTWNE is a total shipwreck.

Just a reminder that we have matching funds (up to $1000 total) this week to raise money for our legal fund.

See post and email by faculty here:
https://keepourlibrarypublic.com/2025/04/09/just-sit-right-back-and-youll-hear-a-tale/

2025-04-03 16:58:46 -0400

500 signatures reached

2025-03-18 13:20:26 -0400

https://youtu.be/AvnVPGFbupU

2025-02-24 10:03:47 -0500

2nd State Films has released the first episode of Save Blasco, "The Power of Minerva!" Thank you to 2nd State Films for producing this documentary at no cost to KOLP. Thank you also to Julio Reyes who hosted the premier at the Maennerchor Plaza at no cost to KOLP.

Below is the link to the YouTube video and the link to "The Power of Minerva" on the Keep Our Library Public website. You can also find Libraries Build Communities, a short video showing that the Blasco Library is much more than books. Please share with everyone you know and please donate to our legal fund to Save Blasco! https://keepourlibrarypublic.com/videos/

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2025-02-13 18:30:09 -0500

<iframe title="GOERIE-Embed Player" width="540" height="350" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="true" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="https://uw-media.goerie.com/embed/video/78288787007?placement=snow-embed"></iframe>

2024-12-22 16:48:36 -0500

https://youtu.be/iKn1toap-QY?si=OGX1hJ7v9Pe6VzfY

Coming soon: SAVE BLASCO! New series in collaboration with keepourlibrarypublic.com ! Stay tuned …and be ready to rally behind a community that decides to stand up in defense of their cherished public library ! And please do donate toward their legal fund to help them fight the good fight for all of us who have ever loved or ever will love their local library! https://www.fundlibraries.org/erie

2024-11-23 14:42:15 -0500

https://youtu.be/IFuOH0-TrJE?si=879If_AUs1OcMsa5. Keep Our Library Public is a nonprofit association fighting to keep our Erie (PA) County Executive, Brenton Davis, from leasing substantial space in our public library, the Blasco Memorial Library, to a wealthy, private institution, Gannon University. Many public libraries, Blasco Library included, came to be in part due to the generosity of others. And as public spaces, they should remain so. Public libraries belong to the people! Please go to KeepOurLibraryPublic.com for more information. Support us today!

2024-11-07 23:30:06 -0500

Check our a preview of a new documentary that will tell the story of our fight to Keep Our Library Public here: https://www.2ndstatefilms.com/

2024-10-04 12:47:10 -0400

No one is coming to save us or our beloved Blasco Library. This is something we must do ourselves. Between online donations and checks sent directly to us, we've raised $30k so far. However much of that has already covered legal fees so far. We need to keep that momentum going! We have to be our own heroes. If you have already donated to our legal fund, thank you and please consider giving again. If you haven’t donated, be your own hero and donate today. https://www.fundlibraries.org/erie

2024-08-16 10:41:13 -0400

For further information–including copies of the Gannon/Blasco lease and our complaint, please go to https://keepourlibrarypublic.com/faqs/.

To see how the lease affects you as an Erie County PA taxpayer, please go to https://keepourlibrarypublic.com/taxpayer-facts/

What can you do? DONATE!
Because EveryLibrary is a 501c3, these donations are tax-deductible: https://www.fundlibraries.org/erie

2024-07-09 12:34:35 -0400

Keep Our Library Public (KOLP) has filed a legal complaint in the Erie County Court of Common Pleas to prevent 3200 square feet of Blasco Erie County Public Library in Erie County, PA from being leased to a tax-exempt, private, religious university. Please help us fund our legal fight!

https://keepourlibrarypublic.com/donate/

2024-07-08 22:04:27 -0400

Please help us fund our legal fight!
Donations given through https://www.fundlibraries.org/erie are tax deductible.

Thank you for your support! Please share the petition with everyone you know!

Together we can win this fight!

2024-07-01 19:11:29 -0400

Watch video of news coverage of our lawsuit against Brenton Davis and Erie County here: https://www.yourerie.com/news/pennsylvania-news/erie-county/keep-our-library-public-files-lawsuit-against-erie-county-brenton-davis/

2024-07-01 07:12:30 -0400

100 signatures reached

2024-06-30 13:12:06 -0400

50 signatures reached