No back-up plan. That’s what Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer told
reporter Eric Leins recently when asked what the city has in mind
if it ultimately fails to win state bond money to build a new
library.
No back-up plan. That’s what Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer told reporter Eric Leins recently when asked what the city has in mind if it ultimately fails to win state bond money to build a new library.
“The back-up plan is we get no expanded library,” Springer said. “There are no alternatives because there would be a tax burden the community wouldn’t support.”
Is that really the best we can do?
Morgan Hill, like Gilroy, was not awarded library construction funds in the first round of Proposition 14 grant-making. Unlike Gilroy, Morgan Hill officials have said they will use their one-third contribution to the hoped-for new library to renovate and expand the city’s current library, if the worst-case scenario – no funding from the upcoming second and third rounds – becomes a reality.
But Gilroy? Apparently city leaders plan to keep those library impact fees – collected from home developers for every new house they construct in Gilroy – in the bank and let library patrons suffer with an overcrowded, outdated facility that cannot accommodate the number of volumes, seats or square feet this community needs for untold years to come. Meanwhile, those library impact fees will continue to be collected and stuffed into the bank.
We recognize that there are differences between the two cities’ situations; the pertinent one being that Morgan Hill’s library has room to expand, while Gilroy’s is completely hemmed in. But that doesn’t mean some creative thinking can’t be employed to come up with a backup plan that will make the most of Gilroy’s roughly $7 million in library impact fees.
Since our mayor and city leaders are apparently out of ideas when it comes to the library, we’d like to suggest that other civic-minded folks apply their brain power to this problem – immediately.
It’s an unfortunate reality that there are more hands out for Prop. 14 bond money than there are dollars to fill them; coming away empty handed is a very real possibility for our community.
And although we still hope that Gilroy’s $12.7 million wish will be granted by the state library construction board, it’s only prudent to have alternatives in case the library fairy turns out to be an ogre.
We urge the city’s newly minted Downtown Specific Plan Task Force to tackle this with an eye toward turning a possible rejection into a blessing in disguise. Where downtown could a 52,000-square-foot library be accommodated? Is there an empty lot or a shuttered building that would fit the bill?
What creative methods might be employed to find financing for the construction or rehabilitation? Could an incentive package – a developer gets approvals, rebates or variances for a project in exchange for taking on the burden of a creating a downtown library – be used?
What about Gavilan College or the Gilroy Unified School District? If the state library construction board’s money tap runs dry, could a partnership between the city, county library and these two educational agencies be formed to create an affordable library that would serve them all?
Let’s look at the empty retail space around town. We might have an abandoned Wal-Mart building soon, and there are plenty of other empty retail shells in town. Library siting experts say placing a library in a busy retail location will draw patrons who otherwise might not darken a library’s door.
Gilroy is in desperate need of a new library. We might get lucky and cash in a $12.7-million library construction “lottery ticket.” But it’s important to prepare now for the very real possibility we won’t.
