Having had its request for state money turned down twice, the
Library Commission decided Monday night to recommend foregoing a
third attempt.
Having had its request for state money turned down twice, the Library Commission decided Monday night to recommend foregoing a third attempt.
“After talking to the reviewers of our application, it seemed a definite conclusion that we wouldn’t be able to win next round,” said Jeanne Gregg, commission chair. “It would take major revisions of our current application to even be considered. There just isn’t time, especially over the holidays.”
The City Council will make the final decision. No date has been set for the council to review the commission’s recommendation.
At stake is $91.8 million left after two rounds of grant-making by the state Library Board. The money comes from a $350 million library construction and renovation bond issue approved by the voters in November 2000. Gregg said the board already has grant applications totaling $92 million from cities without libraries at all or those 50-years-old or older, a significant pointer for winners; new cities are still applying.
Morgan Hill’s request was for $13,704,000, far more than all but two of the round two winning projects.
Time was a major consideration, Gregg said, since a revised application is due Jan. 16. Mayor Dennis Kennedy, Gregg, city staff members and Deputy County Librarian Sarah Flowers, held a conference call last Friday with the team of grant reviewers, collecting information on what was weak and what was strong in the city’s application.
Major revisions would be required, Gregg said. Reviewers wanted far more details in a current needs assessment and school district commitment than the application included. A needs assessment, she said, would say “732 people say we need a community room in the library.”
The application must then describe how its plan would meet that need.
Needs assessments must be newer than five years old and, Gregg said, Morgan Hill’s was done in summer of 1998; by January 2004 it would be past the allotted age and a new one would have to be organized, taken, analyzed and combined in a third grant application. All during the busy holiday season.
A resubmission requires a more complete agreement with the Morgan Hill School District, too, Gregg said.
“We would need an entirely new memorandum of agreement with the school district; that would take too much time,” she said. Other cities included more specifics on agreements between library and schools. While the library was specific on how many staff hours and when they could supply staff, the school district was not.
“I can’t see the school board committing significant resources to the library,” she said.
The MHSD is undergoing serious budget difficulties.
The library’s 64 planned computers also came under scrutiny, Gregg said. Reviewers thought that number was excessive and wanted to know how each one was to be used. They also commented that the application did not stress literacy enough.
Gregg said she understood why Morgan Hill’s application fared less well than some others.
“It is disappointing,” she said, “but there is a tremendous amount of need.”
Gregg pointed out that to win $3 million for its library, the tiny city of Castroville earned more than $1 million all on its own, even sending its children door to door to raise funds.
“I feel the ones that got the money needed help most desperately,” Gregg said.
Morgan Hill has other resources, including Redevelopment Agency funds, though few are left unclaimed from the $147 million. A decision to extend the RDA is not impossible, Mayor Dennis Kennedy said at a council meeting Wednesday night.
Reviewers did like everything about the new library’s design, Gregg said. The potentially $21 million, 40,000 square-foot building has been designed by Berkeley architects Noll and Tam. At a recent council meeting Kennedy pointed out that those figures work out to $525 a square-foot and that, with some adjustment and possibly a new site less expensive to build on, the cost might come down.
Gregg said one thing not discussed in the conference call was a potential library site. The council chose empty land behind the current library and city hall on Peak Avenue, a choice that received top marks in the first application but lower marks in the second.
Councilman Steve Tate said a call has been scheduled for next Friday to discuss site with Richard Hall, second in command to Kevin Starr, the state librarian.
Tate said he agreed with the commission’s decision.
“The basis of their recommendation is absolutely solid,” Tate said. “I absolutely support it. We can’t get things in place in time. However, the city may still decide to do it (apply in the third round) by submitting the previous application.”
Such action, Tate said, would be to keep the city’s request before the board in case more funds to build or renovate libraries were forthcoming, a path suggested by some State Board members.
At Monday’s meeting the Library Commission appointed Charles Cameron, George Nale and Gregg to a Library subcommittee, along with Kennedy and Tate – and others to be named later – to discuss what to do about finding a new library.
“We will look at the whole issue of alternatives: a much smaller building, a different site or additions to the current building,” Gregg said.
