Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Vincent Tan, 7, kicks back with a storybook on a rainy afternoon at the Cupertino Library.

Time to cast your vote

Residents to decide if spending $22 million on a new library is sound economics

By Jeff Kearns

With the March 7 primary election on the fast-approaching horizon, Cupertino voters are preparing for their chance to tell city officials whether or not they approve spending up to $22 million on a new library.

Despite their differences, advocates on both sides of the Measure A library issue agree on one thing: the existing library isn't cutting it.

Opened in 1972 and expanded in 1988, the Cupertino library seems to have outlived its usefulness. The facility has no reading room, computer terminals are crammed wherever space permits, the building's octagonal design makes it crowded and difficult to navigate and there isn't enough shelf space to house the library's collection. On top of that, officials say, the library is the busiest in the Santa Clara County library system.

If Measure A is approved and the City Council agrees, the city would build a new library for a price tag between $18 million and $22 million. Two of the city's five council members already have backed construction of a new building.

After years of preliminary planning, council members last fall decided to put the library issue on the March ballot for an advisory vote. The election outcome isn't binding, but most council members say they aren't making up their minds until the election results are in. Mayor John Statton and Councilman Michael Chang have publicly endorsed the measure. Dozens of local educators, community leaders and former politicians also have lined up behind the ballot item.

Cupertino head librarian Mary Ann Wallace and county librarian Susan Fuller are pushing for a new building, along with the "Yes on Measure A" committee made up of library workers and other community activists.

"At the current library, use has grown so substantially that it just isn't big enough anymore--there aren't enough seats and there isn't any room for computers and an expanding collection," Fuller said. "And the building's layout just isn't efficient. You lose a lot of space with the round shape."

Part of the problem, Fuller said, is that the Internet and computers have fundamentally changed the way libraries are laid out. Wallace says she'd like to double the number of computer terminals in the library to about 92.

Right now, Wallace says, the library can't even house its own collection of 300,000 volumes. Anytime the library wants to add a new item, it has to take an old one out of circulation.

"We figure at least a third of the collection is out at any given time, which means we could not physically hold our own collection," Wallace says.

The library has the most circulated collection in the county system and is the most used public facility in Cupertino, officials say. Patrons make more than 500,000 visits per year and check out about 1.5 million volumes.

Right now, the building measures 37,000-square-feet, including the 13,000-square-foot annex added in 1988. A 1998 report by an independent library consultant concluded that any new building should be about 69,000 square feet to house the current library, add reading and computer areas and leave room for future growth. The city slimmed that plan down to 63,000 square feet.

Former councilwoman Barbara Rogers and her husband, Pat, Cupertino Library patrons since moving here in 1966, have been two of Measure A's most vocal supporters.

"A library is a very important part of the community," Barbara Rogers says, "And I wouldn't want to live in a community that didn't have one. Having some familiarity with this library, it seems, for me, that there's no alternative but to build a new one.

"The building is not inexpensive. You get what you pay for and to try and do it on the cheap doesn't work. To build a new inexpensive library would be penny-wise and pound-foolish because it would need to be expanded again."

Cupertino National Bank chairman Don Allen also is backing the Measure A effort.

"If you build something from scratch, the cost to retrofit it is just about double," Allen says. "The cost of retrofitting is within five percent of the cost of the new building. And what we have now is a facility that was very adequate when it was built, but the community is double the size it was then. If I try to check a book out at 3:30 in the afternoon on the weekend it's going to take a half-hour."

Plans for a new library haven't been drawn up and no location has been named, but right now there are two possibilities: The open field south of the current library or in the plaza between the library and City Hall. The major option being considered for the new building is underground parking, which would add around $4 million, bringing the total cost close to $22 million.

Opposition to Measure A--at least in the formal sense--consists mostly of former Cupertino Mayor and Councilman Nick Szabo, who wrote the argument against the measure for the voter guide. Szabo agrees that the library is too squeezed to operate properly, but contends building a new library would be financially risky, because it would deplete the city's general fund.

"I'm a great advocate of the library," Szabo says, "but I'm opposed to this way of financing it and discarding the old building."

Paying with general-fund money, Szabo says, might force the city to make staffing cuts--perhaps at the library--if the economy cools off and forces the city to tighten its belt. "Last time, when I was mayor, library hours were cut drastically, and that's the kind of thing I'm afraid of." Szabo served as mayor from 1992-93. Library hours were later restored.

Szabo says expanding the current library would cost around $12 million. It could be financed by a bond measure that wouldn't drain cash out of the city's bank account.

Measure A supporters, however, say the cost savings of adding on to the library wouldn't be worth the added expense of retrofitting the existing structure and the hassle of continuing to live with it. "The cost of retrofitting is within five percent of the construction cost of a new building," Allen says.

Measure A supporters say that, in addition to the $12 million construction cost, the renovation and expansion plan would also require an estimated $5 million to seismically retrofit the old library building if the basic structure of the building were to be altered. Additionally, a renovation plan would require an estimated $1 million for moving the library to a temporary home during remodeling. Perhaps more importantly, Measure A supporters say, the old building would need to be re-wired for computer networking.


Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Critics of the Cupertino library call the facility crowded and outdated.




The city Library Commission started discussing the need for a new library in early 1988, and an expansion committee was formed later that year to study the issue. That committee ruled out the idea of a branch library as impractical because it would have split resources while increasing costs. The committee also found expanding the library would add increased expenses over building a new one.

Public Works Director Bert Viskovich, who has been managing the library project, says remodeling and expanding the library would run between $17 million and $19 million. "If you build a new one, it costs a bit more, but you gain a building," he says.

Viskovich says the city must get citizen input on where the new library would be built if approved.

On top of an $18 million price tag, for a new library, Viskovich says, it would cost about $4 million to put one level of parking under a new building and make improvements to the town plaza.

The footprint of a new library building alone would eat up about 60 of the 140 parking spaces at city hall, Viskovich says. If the library is constructed in the current parking area without an additional underground garage, adding the same amount of parking spaces on the adjacent field would probably take up about half of its space.

City officials faced a similar spacing issue three years ago, while trying to decide whether they should expand the existing Senior Center or knock it down and build a bigger one--both of which were options with fairly similar price tags. The old seniors building was bulldozed two weeks ago, and construction has begun on a new one.

According to Carol Atwood, the city's budget manager, Cupertino has $26 million in reserves, and could pay for the new library in cash today if it wanted to. City staffers would never recommend that, but the city is in good shape financially, Atwood says.

Even though the city is carrying about $60 million in debt, it still has enough reserves to pay for 75 percent of operating costs, plus debt service for up to a year. Much of that $60 million came from several parkland and open space acquisitions in the early 1990s, including Blackberry Farm, Creekside Park, Memorial Park and a remodel for City Hall.

City officials last year considered extending the city's utility tax past its 2015 expiration, but dropped that plan in October. Council-members didn't think the city needed to use the tax as a source of financing the library and wanted to avoid linking the two in voters' minds for the upcoming election.

Half of the new library's cost would come from the city's reserves and the other half would come from issuing certificates of participation against future revenue, repaying the funds over a 20-year period.

"The city is in strong economic health. We have a very good reserve that's been built up over the years with the council being conservative," Atwood says.

Cupertino isn't the only city playing the cramped-library blues. Saratoga voters will be voting next week on a $15 million bond measure to fund a library expansion there. Los Gatos is also trying to figure out how to fund a new library. Mountain View opened a new library two years ago.

Cities with upcoming library expansion projects will all be watching next week's vote on state Proposition 14, which would set aside about $350 million as matching funds for local library projects already under way, with the state picking up about 65 percent of the costs.

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