City approves funds to keep temporary library running
By Kate Carter
The city council last week agreed to spend an additional $20,000 to keep the city's temporary library up and running when the Sacred Heart Church puts its utility connections underground.
The city is renting space from the church for the temporary library while the permanent library is being built. But the church, also undergoing a remodel, told city staff this winter that it would be undergrounding its utilities and, to stay connected to them, the temporary library would have to as well.
When first informed of the situation at its May 1 meeting, the council members expressed displeasure at paying to resolve a situation that they felt should have been foreseen by the church before a lease was signed. The council asked Assistant City Manager Lorie Tinfow to explore ways of reducing costs by possibly installing a temporary aerial utility connection for the library. Members also raised the possibility of challenging the city's need to pay the additional costs at all.
At that time, Tinfow told the council she wasn't sure the church would support an aerial connection, but at its May 7 meeting she said church staff had told her that that would be all right. However, Tinfow's research into the new utility pole idea resulted in costs higher than the $20,000 for undergrounding. Church contractor Blach Construction would charge the city approximately $12,000 for the trenching and Pacific Bell would charge about $7,000 for the new connection, she said.
To go the aerial route, the city would actually have to install two new poles, Tinfow said, and one of them would cost about $17,000, based on what the city paid to have its existing temporary library pole installed. The city would also have to pay for a generator to power the library during the five to seven days the work would take, she said, and the time it would take to work with PG&E would affect church construction. With undergrounding, the library would lose no power and only one day of telephone service, Tinfow said.
In addition, she said, even if the council opted for an aerial connection, the church would still ask the city to pay for some of the retrenching costs to get its underground line to the library's poles.
Tinfow also responded to the council's challenge of the additional costs, saying that City Attorney Richard Taylor had told her the city could have a case to oppose the new costs, but the lease language was "vague enough to not make it airtight."
"And I'm not sure how contentious we want this to become at this time," she added.
The council agreed that it was better to maintain a good relationship with the church.
"I don't feel like fighting with the church on this; they've been very good to us," Councilwoman Ann Waltonsmith said, adding that the city may want to extend its lease with the church for the library site.
The council was concerned, though, about going over budget on the temporary library. Tinfow said she had set aside a $20,000 contingency for the temporary library, as well as $30,000 to restore the site, but Councilman Stan Bogosian said they have already exceeded their expected budget for the temporary library.
Bogosian said that he would prefer to pay a portion of the costs, with the church paying the rest. However, Tinfow said the church believes it has already paid more than it had to in order to accommodate the library.
Regardless, the council voted 4-1, with Bogosian in opposition, in order to keep the peace with the church and keep things on track.
"I hate spending the money, but I want to be a good neighbor," Mayor Nick Streit said. "I think when we're all done with this, we're going to find this was a very expensive temporary library."
Saratoga, California Since 1955
