The county and trustees of Schenectady County Library have postponed the long-planned expansion of the main downtown branch in favor of making approximately $1 million in renovations to heating and electrical systems.
Trustees will make another try at a redesign but did not say when they would come up with a plan.
In the meantime, county officials will likely ask contractors to withdraw their pending bids and will come up with “a whole different set of specifications,” said county Legislator Gary Hughes, D-Schenectady, chairman of the Legislature’s Education and Library Committee.
The latest twist in the library saga took place Thursday night when trustees voted to allow the county to modify bid specifications that would focus primarily on replacing original heating and cooling systems in the 40-year-old building.
They also discussed the creation of an ad hoc committee to explore the creation of a library district with taxing authority. The district would make the library system independent of county control. The county currently provides more than $5 million in annual support to the 11-branch system.
The systems replacement work will likely result in some short-term closures at the main branch this summer, said board President Esther Swanker.
The trustees also announced a committee to design a new building, chaired by Stephen Fitz.
Thursday’s vote was prompted by a May 15 meeting between the trustees’ Executive Committee and Schenectady County Legislature Chairwoman Susan Savage, D-Niskayuna, and Hughes. During that meeting, the committee proposed the trustees and Friends of the Library take over the project and come up with a new building design. It also proposed to give the Legislature limited oversight on the project.
The county balked at the proposal. “We would not be doing our jobs if we did not have input into the design,” Hughes said. He said he and Savage raised concerns related to community input and to the cost of any new design. The county is facing fiscal problems going into the 2009 budget year and is looking for ways to control costs.
Swanker said the county ignored the trustees’ proposal. Hughes disagreed, saying the discussion that followed resulted in both sides agreeing to fix the building’s obsolete mechanical systems. “We concluded that the work needed to be done as soon as possible,” Hughes said.
The county will pay for the work. The replacement work is estimated to cost at least $1 million. The county would issue bonds for the project.
The Friends and trustees have raised some $2.5 million for the redesign project, now tabled. It is unclear what will happen to the money, which is mostly in pledges and gifts from foundations.
The proposed project would expand the central branch by 9,000 square feet and replace 40-year-old mechanical systems. That plan called for the demolition of the McChesney Room and the construction of a new entrance facing the intersection of Clinton and Liberty streets.
Several weeks ago, a project manager hired by the county determined the central branch would have to be closed during the work. The news caused a public uproar and the county said it would seek alternative bids for the project with the goal of minimizing any closures.
Former library director Ronald L. Lagasse proposed the library district in an opinion article that appeared in The Sunday Gazette. The library district would put the issue of financing into the hands of the public, which would vote annually on the library system’s budget.
Trustee John Karl is chairing the committee. He said the effort is purely informational and would take several years to complete. He said the idea should be explored for the future sake of the library system.
“Our interest is the excellence of the library system,” he said. “In some sense we are captive to the county and to county funding and that has resulted in cuts not of benefit to the system.”
Trustee Denise Murphy McGraw said she did not agree with the proposal. “I don’t endorse the idea that all of us are unhappy,” she said.
Categories: Schenectady County
