On April 14, a group of community members, Friends of the Library board members and Library Trustees recommended to the Orcas Island Public Library Board that “the Board seriously examine expanding the current Library building.”
The eight member committee, Citizens Advisory Committee for Facility Planning (CACFP), is composed of Harvey Himelfarb, Barbara Skotte, Leith Templin and Ken Wood from the community; Douglas Ellis and Marilyn Jackson, from the Friends of the Library and Lois Cornell and John Ashenhurst from the Library Board of Trustees. Lois Cornell serves as Chair of CACFP, with Library Director Phil Heikkinen available as a committee resource.
According to the CACFP’s “Recommendation to the Board of Trustees,” presented on April 14, the Committee met four times between January and April to consider “that the current building…has already or will soon become too limited to deliver the kinds and quality of services the community has come to expect.”
The CACFP established a website at www.orcaslibraryfuture.org to store all documents used or created by the committee and to solicit input from the community.
The report goes on to mention the “significant increase” in the use of computers and Internet. The 1990 building plan did not anticipate patron use of computers.
Today there are eleven workstations and five notebook computers for public use and a whole new group of Library users has appeared. In 1990, libraries were used mostly for access to books and reading materials. Today, the Library houses videotape, music CDs, and video DVDs as well.
CACFP was told that “generous members of the community have offered to pay for the construction of an appropriate addition provided the community is willing to pay the operating expenses for the new space.”
The CACFP committee recommended that the Board pursue expanding the building in order to relieve current crowding and accommodate future growth – provided that the construction is funded without using tax dollars.
Additional recommendation details were included in the report, available at www.orcaslibraryfuture.org.
