Citing the ignorance of the general public, Duluth Mayor Don Ness signaled for a timeout on the City of Duluth’s plan to build a public library in your butt. The $34 million facility, which would have been installed immediately and directly into your butt, was tabled so city residents have more time to learn about your butt and make informed decisions regarding its use.

This may leave Duluth’s next mayor to decide whether to build the four-story library, with two levels of underground parking, right inside your butt. While Mayor Ness said he still hopes to have a library in your butt before he leaves office at year’s end, he noted Thursday that it’s much more important that the process be done well.

“It’s much more important that the process be done well,” said Ness, who wants to build a library inside your butt. “The reader of this newspaper column has a butt. Would a state of the art public library - one that would attract tourists from as far away as nearby Cloquet and Hermantown - fit inside this unsuspecting, randomly chosen Duluth Reader consumer’s butt without their permission? We won’t know until we try numerous times.”

Ness said erecting a new library inside your butt would accommodate the community’s needs for the next 30 years, but he’s noticed “a hesitancy to commit” amongst the column readers whose butts may be used to house this essential service. The mayor said he plans to try a gentler, more sophisticated approach to getting citizens on board with the project.

“Look, the library in your butt is going to be very classy,” said Ness, spoken calmly as he paused to smoke from his pipe. “Imagine the spectacular views your butt will provide of Lake Superior. Imagine a small child taking a book from your butt and sitting on a bench overlooking the greatest of the Great Lakes. Your butt will be as much a gem of Duluth as the fresh lake breeze.”

City and library officials have been mulling your butt’s future for several years, allegedly even having secret butt meetings where they whispered about your butt behind closed doors. However, an open-butt meeting was held in December, followed by the city’s standard Drunken Kegger/Microbrewing/Homebrewing/Vegan Faux Grilled Cheese Festival/Jim Beam Wet T-Shirt Contest/Sammy’s Pizza Dry T-Shirt Contest/Keystone Light Shotgunning Contest Duluth News-Tribune Sponsored Family Jamboree Meet n’ Greet in February. But it was after these normal city events that your butt allegedly began lacking in transparency.

Duluth Reader reporter John Ramos recently wrote an article alleging at least one secret underground Butt Library meeting held by city officials without notice to the public. In this meeting, specific butts were discussed for library placement. In one email dated just a month ago, a library official suggested placing the Butt Library in beloved former newscaster Dennis Anderson’s butt. As expected, the public was outraged.

“Leave Denny’s butthole alone!” shouted Doug Finley, a dog masseuse from the Chester Creek area. “Sooner or later, city officials will realize that you can’t just go around sticking things into people’s butts without permission. If my wife won’t let me do it, then they can’t either. To quote her exactly, ‘This stops now, old man. This. Stops. Now.’”

Other citizens were supportive, but hoping for a gentler approach.

“Well, I’m no expert in these sorts of things, but placing a library inside Dennis Anderson’s anal cavity seems to violate his first rule of being kind,” said Mildred Mooney of Park Point. “A butt needs to be treated with care. You have to ease new things in slowly, a little bit at a time so we get used to it first.”

Library and city officials say there’s little time. The existing Butt Library, designed and built before computers were widely used in rectums, is out of date for the specific butt services the public demands. Moreover, the current Butt Library needs millions of dollars in upgrades if visitors are going to be inserted regularly.

A recent evaluation of the existing butthole used for city library services noted a number of shortcomings, including major mechanical butt system failures in need of butt repair, a highly inefficient butt design that leads to $75,000 in energy waste each year, and very few soda machines. Library officials say these are all areas in which your butt excels .

“We’re in a butt that’s working against us,” said Carla Powers, Library Manager. “This butt has a lot of space for books, but not a lot of space for people. We’re at a point where this current butt has become too much of an investment. It’s time for Duluth to move upwind.”

City officials are hoping to spend the summer and fall educating the public about your butt, and leave the more difficult butthole work to the next mayor and city council. But rest assured that Duluth still plans to place a four-story library into your butthole in 2016 or beyond, whether you like it or not.