By Andrea Earnest | Enterprise Staff
news@enterprisepublications.com
@PlainfieldNews
At its Jan. 25 meeting, the Plainfield village board heard a presentation about the proposed new building from the Plainfield Public Library and its architect for the project, Nagle Hartray.
Village Administrator Brian Murphy explained that the village usually doesn’t involve itself into the affairs of other taxing jurisdictions. He said that they arranged the meeting with the library so that it could get more information out to the village.
“We’re the only group that has this broadcast over cable access television,” Murphy added. “It’s a good community service we can provide to the residents.”
The library is putting two questions on the March 15 ballot, one for the $39 million building bond that will fund the construction and the second question for the limiting tax increase that will fund operations of the new building.
Eric Penney, an architect with Nagle Hartray, presented the details of the building plan to the board.
Penney spoke about how the refined site plans, locations and building size throughout the planning process and through public meetings with residents.
Parking was a big concern for the building, and the plan now calls for parking that is close to the building entrance, so that residents don’t have to walk far.
The original building was built in 1989, and major changes in safety codes, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the emergence of technology now make it necessary for the library to make some changes. If the referenda don’t pass, the library will have to make major cuts to address the aging library building.
Library Director Julie Milavec talked about the consequences of a failed referendum.
When the Plainfield library was first built, the population of the library district was just over 14,000 and there were five schools in District 202. Today, the library has over 75,000 people in its district, and there are 30 schools in District 202.
“We are serving our five times as many patrons with that same 27,000 square-foot building that we broke ground on in 1990,” Milavec said.
Milavec added that librarians are still just as needed in today’s technology-driven society.
“In 1990, we did 2,500 reference questions answered. In 2015, we did over 56,000 questions answered,” Milavec said, adding that today’s questions are also more complex than ever before, since the simpler questions can be solved by Google or searching online.
“People need a place to connect, a place to collaborate, a place to make things and share things,” Milavec said. “21st century libraries are community centers for the way we live today.”
The urgency behind passing this referendum comes from the age and condition of the current library building, Milavec said.
“If you look at the surface, it looks just fine,” she said. “But after 25 years of hard use as a public building, the cost of simply keeping it functional continues to rise.”
If the referendum fails in March, keeping up the library will cut into funds, services and also library space, according to Milavec. She added that costly updates would be needed to comply with today’s building codes.
“An estimated $10 million would be required to make the urgent repairs to this existing 25-year-old building,” she said.
As an examples, Milavec talked about the library’s current boiler room, which houses the boiler, the water heater and the main electrical panel all in the same small room.
Today’s code calls for a minimum distance between those pieces of equipment and an actual physical separation, which would necessitate enlarging the area and drawing from public library space.
“Covering the magnitude of repair costs without increasing the funds to the library with a referendum would require a 20 percent cut into the library’s operating budget,” Milavec said.
The library’s budget is 78 percent for staff and library materials, 22 percent of the budget is everything else, Milavec added.
“A 20 percent cut would be devastating to the services we have today,” she said.