Time to get involved in Marion library discussion

Sometimes, when there's trouble ahead, you've got to pump the brakes.

That's what the Marion Library Board did in a cramped meeting room in the Library on Wednesday evening. Elsewhere, at the very same time, dozens of Marion residents were gathering in a larger room to hear about the board's still-evolving plans to tear down the current library and replace it with a larger one tied to a mixed-use residential/retail development.

That isn't sitting well with many folks, and the board knew some of them surely would be sitting in that room.

What the board also knew is that its critics, and even some of its friends, have argued that such a large, far-reaching public project should be put to a public vote. That was not the board's plan, but the plan changed on Wednesday. Brakes were applied, just in time.

'Don't fear a vote,” City Manager Lon Pluckhahn told the board, explaining that the project might be structured to require a public vote on issuing bonds. If not, he said there are other ways to put the project on the ballot, once there's a detailed project for voters to judge.

'I would hope that if we say that tonight, they know we are listening,” said Susan Kling, Library Board member and former library director.

'I think if we don't, we'll give the impression, rightfully or wrongfully, that we're trying to hide something,” said Library Board member Robert Buckley. The vote for a vote was unanimous.

And in all honestly, this project has been hiding in plain sight.

The board created a committee to assess the current 20-year old library's needs and deficiencies in 2013, with a report issued in 2014. That was followed by another hefty assessment that concluded building a new library would be cheaper in the short- and long-run than remodeling and expanding the existing facility. And a mixed-use development with retail and apartments would be an economic boost to the uptown district.

It's all been discussed in multiple public meetings of the library board. The full reports chronicling the entire saga are posted on the library's website, under a curious tab labeled 'Inspire.”

Although the board may be inspired, the rest of us were largely uninformed. Truth is, Library Board meetings are not on our radar. We didn't know to click 'Inspire.” So news of the plan buzzing around town in recent months was news to us. Next came the inevitable, persistent allegations of backroom shenanigans.

So what's a board to do? Members spent the better part of two years on due diligence developing a project. They operated behind an open door that we simply didn't enter, and posted information we didn't read. So now they've got a both a well-developed course of action and unhappy citizens who think they've been bypassed and blindsided.

What you do is swallow hard, accept cold, clear reality, get ready to sell your public library project to the public and have a vote.

It's the right thing to do, even if we're still unsure what exactly we'll be voting on. It's what the community did 21 years ago when it came together to fund the current library.

And if the current plan is as great as it's backers insist ... ”You ought to be able to sell it to people,” said John Nieland, a former Marion mayor who said he is running to retake the post this fall.

My advice to the sellers is put Nancy Miller out front, again.

Miller gave much of an inheritance she received to build the current library, also known as the Nancy Miller Marion Library. Inside that building on Wednesday, Miller, a retired elementary teacher, made a passionate, animated and funny pitch for scrapping her namesake and building a new one. She worked the room and stole the show, arguing that a library should be about what kids and young families need. The current one, she argued, isn't meeting those needs, and should be replaced.

'You get the idea. I am excited about it. I am for it. There's a lot of misinformation,” Miller said. 'Libraries aren't dying. They're booming.”

More public meetings are planned, including one on at 5:15 p.m. on Wednesday at the library where residents will be asked for ideas on what they want in a library.

The project is expected to takes much clearer shape over the next two months, but a vote won't come until March or May.

Those brake lights are a clear sign. It's time to start paying attention.

l Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com