By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The Yachats Library Commission wants to step back from an immediate expansion of the city library after the pledge of a $150,000 donation by longtime resident Marguerite Petersen.
On Wednesday, the City Council agreed, barely.
After months of study and preparing plans for the expansion, the commission and council were prepared to go ahead with a $320,000 bid to remodel and expand the current building on West Seventh Street.
But Petersen’s pledge – in the name of her late husband Bent Petersen – got the Library Commission thinking it might be wise to pause the expansion project, see if it could leverage even more donations and grants, and make the library building a bigger and better place.
“This (donation) is a fantastic opportunity to look further out into the future,” commission member David Rivinus said during the group’s meeting Tuesday.
On Wednesday the council voted 4-1 to reject the current bid for the expansion and voted 3-2 to authorize the Library Commission to conduct a deeper needs assessment. Councilor James Kerti opposed both motions; Leslie Vaaler joined him to oppose the assessment.
The council had approved the expansion project in July and the city worked to finish specifications and get bids by the end of October. In July, the city estimated it needed $370,000 for the project.
The library on West Seventh Street was built in 1973 and is now considered too small to hold all its books and many of its programs.
The city had twice proposed moving the library to the 501 Building adjacent to the Yachats Commons, but backed off those plans when estimates to move it there topped $1 million. That left library supporters to make do with the current building or find an affordable expansion and remodel.
The proposal would add 400 square feet to the east side of the library and re-do much of the exterior and entrance. The city estimated $130,000 for the addition, $170,000 to remodel 2,000 square feet of the existing building and $70,000 for fixtures and furnishings.
The city OK’d using $60,000 from its capital improvement budget, and spending $100,000 of a bequest to the library from the Hall family. Friends of the Library, a nonprofit support group, has pledged $50,000. The Petersen donation brings the projected total to $360,000.
But with the large donation, the commission now thinks it can leverage grants from big groups like the Roseburg-based Ford Family Foundation. Commission Chair Marv Wigle suggested spending $10,000 to $20,000 to hire a library expert to study:
- The current and future needs of library patrons;
- Current and future demands on library space and how to best use or expand it;
- The most effective governing and management of the library, which now has volunteer librarians and staff and is overseen by a city-appointed commission; and
- The advantages and disadvantages of joining regional library organizations to improve access to online material and books.
Rivinus urged the Library Commission to “swallow haste and pride” in order to develop a better plan and find grants – the Ford Foundation can fund one-third the cost of construction – to leverage the Petersen donation.
Marion Godfrey agreed, saying the commission should now seek a “detached, outside opinion which we should have done in the first place.”
“I’d rather wait and do the job right,” she said.
Petersen told the commission she agreed with its goal to use her donation “to better address the future” of the library and community.
But the donation comes with one catch that the commission readily accepted. Bent Petersen was a math professor at Oregon State University, moving to Yachats in 2001. Over his lifetime he amassed 5,000 books in what Marguerite Petersen termed a “very eclectic” collection. Now she wants them out of the house so her grandchildren can use that space.
“I wanted some things done and they wanted some things done,” a smiling Marguerite Petersen said after Tuesday’s commission meeting.