Imperial library expansion a true underdog story, grassroots effort

IMPERIAL — A significant public library expansion in this climate of city and county austerity up and down the state? Good luck with that.

Yet if all goes according to plan, the city of Imperial will see its Public Library, through creative financing and the homegrown talent of city staff, undergo an $800,000 expansion and renovation by November.

Imperial sits in the economic “friend zone,” somewhere between the steamy passion of consistent residential growth and the fickle nature of slow, incremental commercial development. So money can be tight, resulting in too few people to answer the phone at City Hall, department heads who hit the streets rather than sit behind a desk, and a council that has to consistently watch its spending, aware that houses do not fill the general fund budget.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants to investigate, design and engineer a new library wasn’t going to happen. So Christine Carter did the early legwork and imagining herself. And Jeorge Galvan’s department stepped up to design the expansion in-house. Marlene Best and her financial team figured out a three-headed approach to finding the money.

It was truly a grassroots effort.

“We have very talented staff, and they all worked collaboratively in coming up with the idea and how to make it work,” Mayor Mark Gran said. “A lot of cities are going to have to do this due to limited funding.”

Last week, the City Council approved shelling out just under $24,000 to Vexer Engineering of El Centro to do the structural engineering the city does not have the expertise to do, City Manager Best said. Other than that, the work thus far hasn’t left city limits.

The need to expand the library has been great, indicated by the 680 new library cards issued in 2014 alone, and the 26,000 pieces of material checked out last year that Gran referred to in his state of the city address a few weeks ago.

As a bedroom community of El Centro, where residential development has sprawled to the southern and eastern edges of the city and continues to do so, Imperial added about 2,000 residents between 2010 and January 2014, where the California Department of Finance put the population at 16,708. At one point, before the housing collapse, Imperial was the second-fastest growing city in the state. Best believes the population today is closer to 17,000.

Carter, the library director, has been with the city for the last 10 years, on hand through much of the explosive residential growth, which has translated into a desperate need for more space.

“We’re crammed in here as tight as can be,” she said.

So city officials let her go for it, turning Carter loose to find a solution to the cramped quarters at a reasonable cost.

“If you want to get things done, it’s better to do your research first,” she said. “The idea started quite a while ago; I worked on it off and on.”

Carter began where one would expect — the Internet. “I basically went online and found some formulas for calculating space and how we could work on giving as much space as possible within the confines of the budget.”

She brought back options to Best and city staff, and that’s where the Planning Department took over the drafting of the library, from floor plans to elevations, Best said. Planning Director Galvan and staff created various drafts, and the City Council narrowed it down to one.

“Bear in mind,” Best said, “it’s a draft.” Vexer Engineering will bring it to specifications and code.

The draft design will add 4,700 square feet of space, Best said, and Carter said she wants to bring in more computer stations for the community’s use; more space for the public to come in and relax, read a book or study; the ability to expand the collection.

“In truth, I’ve been doing the happy dance ever since the city said, ‘Yes, go through with it,’” Carter said.

To pay for the library, the city will utilize a mix of developer impact fees pulled from parks and recreation due to parks and rec programs being held there, and some administrative impact fees because of City Council chambers and administrative space at the library.

The third source will come from what were formerly Redevelopment Agency funds, Best said.

The library and other city projects likely would have happened faster and been funded at higher levels if not for the end of redevelopment agencies by the state in February 2012. What was in essence a blank check of property taxes redirected to communities to eliminate blight, is now gone.

Many cities, such as Imperial and El Centro, for instance, sold bonds against that revenue before RDAs went away only to have those funds held up in red tape while cities haggled with the state to use them. That is one stream Best believes the city will be able to utilize.

Also, some form of RDA disbursements are still occurring, yet the state holds the purse strings, paying out at much smaller amounts and at defined intervals throughout the year.

“Given all these resources,” Best said, “the City Council approved it.”

But that won’t be the end of the costs. Best said the city sees the project topping out around $1 million, with the remaining $200,000 being gathered through library fundraising efforts. Best said Carter is already cooking up plans.

“We have some ideas we’re going to try to work on,” Carter said. “I don’t have anything set in stone.”

She is now gathering intel from fellow librarians throughout the region: “That’s what’s cool about the library community; we share and we don’t mind sharing.”

So far, Carter has thought about more formal black-tie dinner fundraisers as well as fun events like holding a miniature golf tournament inside the library, something she has seen done to success by another library.

With the construction taken care of, this remaining cost will be for furniture, technology and odds and ends needed to fill the expanded space, she said.

The entire project is an important endeavor, Carter said, one that both meets the demands of and reflects the community.

“One of the phrases we hear is to improve our community through the expansion of knowledge,” Carter said, “which I think is great. But I think it’s only part of what we do. … We’re basically a community hub.”

Photo by Joselito Villero

This story originally appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, March 8, 2010.