A year and a half after St. Albert city council approved a $21.9-million borrowing bylaw for a new branch library, the issue has finally been put to bed.
Back in July 2017, the controversial move by the former city council prompted a petition, a plebiscite and a full year of abstruseness from the current city council as it grappled with an overwhelming "no" vote on the project.
Since its inception, the borrowing bylaw has been a bogeyman for reactionaries in St. Albert, bitterly dividing the community. The debate shifted quickly away from the amount of money involved, toward whether the library was even telling the truth about needing more space – and there it has largely remained. The way the 2017 plebiscite was worded didn't help matters: it asked whether residents supported further planning for a branch library, instead of asking whether residents supported the price point of said library.
The decision to kill the borrowing bylaw, which came Jan. 7, reflects a city council that has finally grown into its role. This is a council that voted the other way in a 4-3 split on a nearly identical motion in November 2017, shortly after the municipal election.
At that time, councillors – many of whom were fresh on the job and were looking forward to an incoming report on facility development – said they wanted to keep their options open and not make a decision quickly.
Indeed, the Jan. 7 decision did not come quickly. It was rendered after months of research and debate, and only after city council approved an alternate solution in the form of a storefront library.
The 3,000-square-foot storefront will cost $517,000 in capital dollars and comes with an operating price tag of $279,000 in 2019 – costs that, while not comparable to a stand-alone branch library, are still noteworthy.
This editorial board has opined in the past on the merits of the storefront project. The spectre of more library space, weighed alongside the 2017 plebiscite vote, has proved a difficult one to reconcile – especially given how political the issue has been.
In the context of a future where borrowing $21.9 million for a branch library is no longer an imminent possibility, the storefront solution would be a more palatable compromise if it wasn't for that political aspect. In approving the storefront, councillors ultimately played to both sides of the debate: while they adhered to the letter of the plebiscite by not planning further for a branch library, it's debatable whether they violated the spirit of it by approving library space at all.
Ultimately, time will tell whether the storefront library is worth its cost, both in dollars and in council's credibility. But library CEO Peter Bailey said it best last week when he told the Gazette the decision to roll back the borrowing bylaw had a feeling of finality about it.
In time, once council has sorted out its messy capital plan and comes to a firm consensus on facility needs, there may be an opportunity to revisit the issue of library space – but only after the topic has been given a long rest and after the division sowed around it has had time to mend.
Editorials are the consensus view of the St. Albert Gazette’s editorial board.
