Powell River’s public library is at a crossroads. Voting unanimously, City of Powell River Council approved a borrowing bylaw and referendum question that will ask voters to approve borrowing up to $3.5 million to build a new library at Crossroads Village Shopping Centre on Joyce Avenue.
Getting to that point required hours of debate at council’s committee of the whole and city council meetings, Thursday, September 18. It was the final possible day to get the referendum question on the November 15 civic election ballot.
This will be the referendum question: Are you in favour of the City of Powell River adopting Crossroads Village New Library Loan Authorization Bylaw 2391, 2014, to authorize the borrowing of a sum not to exceed $3.5 million over a maximum term of 30 years, for the purpose of building a new municipal public library at Crossroads Village at 4801 Joyce Avenue?
The council chambers gallery was full to capacity for both meetings while the library issue was being discussed.
Charlie Kregel, outgoing chief librarian, kicked off the library debate during the committee of the whole meeting. He offered, on behalf of the library board of directors, conditional support for the Crossroads Village proposal.
“It’s our job to make sure the library we build is a good one,” he said. “If the board feels either the site or the quality falls short of the mark, they simply won’t support it. That’s their role and responsibility to the public under the Library Act.”
He said the library board has never selected a site for a new library and didn’t plan on doing so.
“That is the city’s job and that is what the city has done.”
Kregel said the board thinks the Crossroads site could become a quality library if several conditions are met. He said the building needs to be branded as the library and the road from Alberni needs to be blocked.
He added that the building presents significant challenges. Kregel said seismic upgrading needs to be undertaken and the building is supported by 17 interior columns, some of which need to be removed to maximize space usage. He said there is also noise from the businesses upstairs, so there needs to be acoustic mitigation, which adds to the cost.
In addition to the structural work, Kregel said the proposal from the Crossroads Village proponents appears to be monetarily light in terms of renovations.
“This violates our prime directive to ensure the city gets a quality new library,” he said.
He said the $1.5-million construction budget in the Crossroads Village proposal is not enough to give the library board confidence to support a referendum question based upon it. Kregel said he had spoken with the mayor and others about the prospect of adding to the construction budget. It appears there is a way to add an additional $1.4 million through negotiating with the proponent and a possible city top-up. The details are being worked out, he said.
Kregel expects the library board will meet to consider the Crossroads Village library project within the next week.
“If it does support the project it will be urging our citizens to vote yes in any upcoming referendum on it,” he said.
Following Kregel’s statement, Mayor Dave Formosa said he believes Powell River will have an excellent library. He said Crossroads Village did not come willingly with the proposal being considered by city council.
“It took me two or three phone calls to the proponent to convince them to come forward because they felt putting their money up to do a study when they weren’t on the docket was a waste of time,” Formosa said. He told the proponent if they could be so generous as to provide an estimate at their own cost, it would give the city something to contemplate. He said they did so.
Formosa said the city’s recent study of recreational services revealed that the library is the most used facility in this community, even ahead of Powell River Recreation Complex.
He added that the library is not just a place where people go to read. It’s a place to bring young children, one that attracts seniors, and is a place where the community gathers.
Formosa said he’d love to see the library at Willingdon South but cannot comprehend the expenditure of $10 million to build a library at that site, so he is advocating the Crossroads Village proposal.
“It might not be what everybody wants but at the end of the day, I’ve done my best,” he said.
Formosa then introduced a multi-faceted motion specifying a number of terms for the purchase and development of the Crossroads Village site as Powell River’s new library.
Councillor Maggie Hathaway said she found the motion complicated; she was not sure what she would be voting on, and disagreed with the intent of it.
“We just didn’t make it in time for a referendum at this election,” she said. “We haven’t got there and we don’t have all of the information.
“This is a huge decision for the people of Powell River. Everyone has an idea of where the library should be and I would be very uncomfortable going forward with the location. It’s so divisive and I don’t think it’s our decision, it’s the people’s decision.”
Hathaway suggested an opinion poll rather than a referendum to allow the people to decide if and where they want the library.
“I will have to vote against this motion,” she said.
Councillor Jim Palm said he voted in favour of Willingdon South as the library location years ago. He said, however, the city has come a long way since that time. Palm believes that if Willingdon South went to referendum as the new library site, because of all of the contention and the cost, it would fail.
Councillor Chris McNaughton said he has never supported the Willingdon site because he is an advocate of refurbishing vacant commercial space to help with the economic viability of the community. He supported Formosa’s motion.
Councillor Myrna Leishman also supported the motion, saying it was long past time for a decision.
Councillor Debbie Dee said she was in favour of the Crossroads Village proposal as a viable option if all questions are answered. She campaigned in 2011 for a standalone library at the Willingdon South site, but stated that as a servant of the electorate, she has to think of fiscal responsibility. “This option could save $4 or $5 million and still result in an expanded and improved facility,” Dee said.
Councillor Russell Brewer said Formosa’s resolution was “way too messy,” and he recommended cuts to it. Hathaway said the motion she’d heard was fraught with inaccuracies and she thought it needed cleaning up.
Dee suggested a recess to provide council copies of the resolution. This was the first of three recesses during the committee of the whole meeting to review and revise the motion.
After the third recess, the resolution was rewritten a final time and introduced to the committee meeting. The resolution stated that the city would allocate up to an additional $750,000 toward the renovation budget and McNaughton, as councillor with the finance portfolio, said he was interested in knowing where the money was coming from. Formosa said he anticipates he will be looking at match funding from senior levels of government, plus fundraising and a possible regional district contribution.
When the resolution came to a vote, all but Hathaway supported it.
Dee then asked whether council had to rescind the previous council motion specifying Willingdon South as the library location.
City Clerk Marie Claxton suggested it be considered because it appeared councillors were moving in a different direction from the original motion. She then asked what city council was expecting from staff regarding the new motion.
Formosa said city staff had advised him that if a referendum question was to make the November ballot, that it would have to be prepared by September 18, which was the day of the committee of the whole and city council meetings.
“It’s September 18, so, staff, make it happen,” he said. “We want this on the ballot. How do we do that?”
Mac Fraser, the city’s chief administrative officer, recommended to the committee of the whole that the resolutions concerning the library be forwarded to that night’s city council meeting for consideration.
Claxton said she expected council would want a borrowing bylaw and referendum question drafted prior to the council meeting to be voted on for adoption that evening. She was given that direction.
At that evening’s city council meeting, Formosa commended Claxton and said he was very proud of city staff for the fast turnaround in bringing the bylaw and referendum question to council from the committee meeting earlier in the day. He also commended the rest of his team and the library board for the hard work on the matter.
Council’s first vote was to rescind the original motion from March 3, 2011, identifying Willingdon South as the preferred location for the new library.
Hathaway said she had spoken at the committee of the whole meeting earlier in the day in opposition to moving ahead so quickly with the Crossroads Village proposal because she felt the process of analysis had not be completed. She said she would vote against removing Willingdon South because it would have been part of that process.
“It almost doesn’t make any sense other than for me to make my point because a decision is basically impending to be made by council to go with Crossroads Village,” Hathaway said. “Once that decision has been made I will be supporting council and doing my best to get a referendum passed.”
The motion carried with Hathaway opposed.
In quick order, council passed the three necessary initiatives to hold a referendum question regarding the new library.
The first resolution was to hold a borrowing referendum on the November 15, 2014 election ballot, for an amount of up to $3.5 million for the purpose of purchasing the building at 4801 Joyce Avenue and designing and building a public library. It passed unanimously.
Council then gave three readings to the loan authorization bylaw to permit borrowing for a new library at Crossroads Village. This also passed unanimously.
Finally, the referendum question was presented and passed unanimously, which prompted applause from the gallery.
The inspector of municipalities will now receive the new loan authorization bylaw and referendum question. If the submissions are approved, it will come back to the city, and public notice of the bylaw and referendum question must be presented. The referendum question would be presented to the electorate on election day, and if it passes, then council considers the bylaw for final adoption.
“We still have a little way to go,” Claxton said.
A review of the recommendations and resolutions made regarding the library at the committee of the whole and council meetings, September 18, is available here.
Editor's Note: The following story is from the September 4 committee of the whole meeting:
Architectural firm provides library assessments
Examination indicates both sites suitable for conversion
After commissioning studies into the viability of converting two former commercial buildings into libraries, City of Powell River Council learned there would be a high cost.
Brian Wakelin, representing the Miller Hull architectural firm, appeared before council’s committee of the whole on Thursday, September 4, to outline the findings. Combining purchase of the property and the renovations, the estimated cost of refurbishing the former Brick building at Crossroads Village, based on the Miller Hull study, would be $8.4 million, and the cost of repurposing the former Super Valu building on Joyce Avenue would be $10.3 million, according to Mayor Dave Formosa’s calculations.
Wakelin said city council had received three reports since the architectural firm had become involved in the Powell River library program. There is one for the Willingdon South location and another for the Powell River Recreation Complex proposal. The third, studying feasibility of former Brick location and the old Super Valu building, most recently occupied by Liquidation World, was the one presented at the committee of the whole meeting.
Wakelin said his team examined whether a library could fit in either building. All building systems, such as structural, mechanical and electrical systems, were examined. Building code issues were checked.
“In summary, both buildings can adequately house a library,” Wakelin said. “I have a favourite based on the buildings that I have seen.” Later in the meeting, when asked by Councillor Jim Palm, Wakelin said his preference was the Super Valu site.
The Super Valu building has superior sight lines from Joyce Avenue, according to the architect. Wakelin said it’s a large volume space surrounded by a smaller volume space. There are no columns in the building. For a library today and into the future, “you can do anything you want.”
“It immediately has a sense of civicness about it,” he said. “It has scale and it has grandeur. From the exterior, because there is nothing above it, you have the ability to make a landmark.”
Wakelin said the former Brick has characteristics that are nice. However, this building does not have the sight lines that the other site has.
“It’s the ground floor of a two-storey shared building,” Wakelin said. “It’s more a commercial building than a civic building.”
There is a grid of columns inside and the building was constructed to be a department store, according to the architect. There are some restrictions about how it could be laid out in the future, he added.
“It would work but it would not have the flexibility that the previous building has,” he said.
Councillor Chris McNaughton said he did not see costs of building acquisition in the assessments from Miller Hull.
Formosa said he has knowledge about the two sites that Wakelin has studied, given that he had initiated calls to the two landlords.
“I think the Super Valu is asking for $2 million, and we would have to subdivide it,” he said. “For the Brick building at Crossroads Village, the asking price, I believe, was $2.6 million. We would have to subdivide it off.”
Given the Miller Hull figures for completion of the buildings, Formosa said the total cost of property and renovations for the Super Valu building would be $10.3 million, and the all-up cost for the Brick building would be $8.4 million.
Formosa said the revenue from the upstairs leases at the Crossroads Village site would accommodate a $2-million mortgage.
“Thinking fiscally and responsibly, from my point of view, we can take the $8.4 million down to $6.4, because the revenue from upstairs, I think, would carry about $2 million.”
Formosa said the Super Valu facility would be something nice when completed, but he can’t swallow the $10-million cost.
“Hopefully, we could do something with the $6.4-million concept,” he said. “Fiscally, I’m concerned, as your mayor. I’m concerned about what we need to do with water mains, with our fire hall, with our sewer system and our library.”
