Gilroy will get a new library.
Just more than 68 percent of voters approved the $37 million library bond despite the topsy-turvy economy.
The bond measure needed two-thirds voter approval, and residents remained divided about the importance of a new after-school refuge that will cost property owners $24 per $100,000 of property value each year until 2040.
Library4Gilroy Co-Chair and former City Administrator Jay Baksa had new library supporters over to his home Tuesday night, but most left as the slow-coming results never seemed to change.
The city’s Library Commission, Voz de la Gente, Library4Gilroy and other community groups waged an uphill battle since August, raising $30,000 to counter calls for fiscal conservatism by local conservatives who have warned against the folly of issuing further debt amid these tough economic times.
Many of Library4Gilroy’s 15-member steering committee spent hundreds of hours sending out mailers, walking neighborhoods, calling residents and assembling an array of supporters, but all that work hung in the balance Tuesday night. A survey in August showed a 50-50 chance of passing, and that prediction proved true as library-lovers bit their nails watching NBC at Baksa’s house.
The group’s heartfelt struggle will prove itself or not Wednesday morning.
It’s been 42 years since voters passed a bond to build the city’s cramped library. Passing a bond requires at least two-thirds voter support, and the anti-F crowd is still going up against at least 41 percent of voters who said they would “definitely vote yes” for the library bond, according to a $20,000 survey conducted by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates during the middle of July. It was the second such survey since January, and it rehashed nearly the same results.
City Council members had said there was no Plan B. The library would have either closed because it is not seismically safe, or the cash-strapped city would have had to continue spending millions in deferred maintenance.
Turning to Sacramento was not an option either.
Gilroy looked to the capital three times for state library construction funds between 2002 and 2004. The state had $350 million to dole out for library renovations after Californians approved Proposition 14 in 2000, but other areas with no libraries or severely outdated facilities received the money, and then Governor Schwarzenegger also cut state library funding by about $15 million in August 2007 to tighten the budget.
For the city’s part, it hired the Lew Edwards group in June for $83,000 to get the word out. The group sent out three mailers, held meetings with community groups and commissioned the most recent survey. Councilmen Perry Woodward and Craig Gartman voted against hiring Lew Edwards in June because they said it amounted to spending city money on inappropriate advocacy, but the two joined the 7-0 vote to place the divisive measure on the ballot.
