GILROY
– If at first you don’t succeed in getting the state to help
build you a new library, improve your grant application and try
again.
GILROY – If at first you don’t succeed in getting the state to help build you a new library, improve your grant application and try again.
That was the approach City Council endorsed Monday night when it unanimously approved a new and improved $12.7 million grant application. The city’s first bid was denied in December by the state, which told local officials to work out a more specific plan for giving Gilroy schools better access to the new library.
“I wish we had known on the first go-around that folks would use that criteria so strongly,” Mayor Tom Springer said. “We were caught off guard.”
The delay was called a “minor setback” by Springer in December. However, the field of applicants has increased to 160 over the last two months, whereas only 60 had applied in January.
Complicating matters back in December, Head Librarian Lani Yoshimura said, was the state’s budget crisis.
“With the budget situation going like it was, it was difficult for (Gilroy Unified School District) to say, ‘Yeah, we’ll do that,’ ” Yoshimura said. “They were being asked to commit resources they felt they might not have.”
Since December, GUSD won federal and state monies to provide a number of after school and educational services to families in need. And in recent months, the city and the library have worked with GUSD to sure up a new plan.
GUSD is promising to provide staff time and materials for homework centers, cultural programs and tutoring services, among several other things.
“I believe we can do this despite the budget problem,” Assistant Superintendent Jacki Horejs said. “One of the things we’re trying to do is leverage a lot of the grant money we’ve received in recent months.”
School board trustees are expected to approve the role outlined for GUSD at Thursday’s school board meeting.
The cost of the new library, which will be located like the current one at 7387 Rosanna St., is $19.5 million, up roughly $1 million from December.
The city is setting aside $6.8 million in developer fees, Springer said, to cover the portion of the project the state grant doesn’t fund.
The city has no plans to go it alone if state funding does not come through.
“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.”
