"In 333 B.C., Alexander the Great, on his march through Anatolia, reached Gordium, the capital of Phrygia," the Encyclopedia Brittanica recounts.
"There he was shown the chariot of the ancient founder of the city, Gordius, with its yoke lashed to the pole by means of an intricate knot with its end hidden. According to tradition, this knot was to be untied only by the future conqueror of Asia.
"In the popular account, Alexander sliced through the knot with his sword."
Now, it's unlikely that the conquest of Asia was at stake on Thursday. Even so, that's when Grand Forks saw the cutting of a Gordian knot of its own.
It was City Council member Doug Christensen who swung the sword, judging by news accounts, though other people also had hands in unsheathing the weapon.
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The swipe took place at the meeting where the Grand Forks Library Board was to hear the pros and cons of locations for a new library. "After multiple residents hinted at the idea, City Council member Doug Christensen rose to the podium and breathed more life into the notion," Herald staff writer Sam Easter reported.
"Citizens voting on a funding mechanism for a library-likely a sales tax measure-would have the chance to vote yes or no, he suggested. Then, for those who voted yes, they'd have the decision to vote on two regions of the city: downtown or midtown.
"'Because there are pros and cons as to both locations, let the citizens decide because they've already voted in favor of it,' Christensen explained, adding the measure may collect all of the possible 'yes' votes for the funding mechanism; no one would be encouraged to vote no because of an earlier location decision they disagreed with."
Kudos to Christensen and the others for coming up with this idea, which solves, yes, a knotty problem with one stroke.
The problem, of course, is that Grand Forks has not one but two contentious decisions on its hands. They are whether to raise taxes for a new library, and where to put that new library if taxes are raised.
These are historic and potentially very expensive decisions, and in such cases, it's appropriate to let the public decide. It's true that City Council members are elected for the purpose of making such calls. But it's also true that the council is not the U.S. Senate, that council members are part-time, nonspecialist city officials and that there's no polling to offer real guidance on where public opinion in Grand Forks stands.
In such circumstances and where tax increases are involved, it's entirely proper to let voters make the call. But a tax-increase vote still would have left the just-as-momentous, just-as-contentious library-location question unresolved.
Until now. And that's the beauty of the idea Christensen offered: First, it gets both votes onto a single ballot. Second, it settles the key questions in order, letting residents first decide whether to build a new library and only then where to put it.
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Third, the ballot would "collect all of the possible 'yes' votes for the funding mechanism," not just the votes of loyal fans of a certain location, as the story and Christensen explained.
Besides cutting knots in his spare time, Alexander had other influences on the ancient world. One was the Library of Alexandria, one of the most famous and important libraries in the history of the globe.
Set up by Alexander's successor, the library "flourished as a major center for scholarship" for centuries, Wikipedia reports.
Fitting.
-- Tom Dennis for the Herald
