The Philomath Community Library appears to be in line for a long-awaited expansion project with the City Council this week directing the city manager to move ahead with hiring a firm to conduct a feasibility study.
“We have narrowed the scope of this exploration down to the existing site,” City Manager Chris Workman told councilors at their Dec. 11 meeting. “(We had) some preliminary conversations about looking at other sites … but we just really feel like the library can still function and do what it’s doing at the current location — they just need some more space.”
Workman said he worked closely with Ashlee Chavez, Corvallis-Benton County Library director, on the scope of a request for proposals and believes the feasibility study will attract several qualifying proposals.
Workman said the library’s leadership preferred to remain at Applegate and South 11ith.
“They like where they’re at, they like the parking, there’s a lot of things they like,” Workman said. “They like, obviously, the background history of the library and the construction by volunteers and everything so they don’t feel like they need something so different that the existing site wouldn’t work.”
The library opened in 1995 after hundreds of volunteers had donated thousands of hours to give the community a facility that was five times bigger than the previous version. Workman pointed out in a report to the council that when the library opened, Philomath had a population of 3,158. According to the latest population estimates, the city has grown to 5,801 — an indication of the need to expand.
“It does include a review of the existing site and how they are using the current space and how that could be optimized with an expansion of some sort,” Workman said about the scope of the study. “I’m going to have them look at floodplain regulations as part of that and put a cost estimate together and then eventually some renderings as well.”
The need for library expansion has been outlined in the city’s strategic plan with money set aside in the Land, Building and Equipment fund.
The council asked the city manager several questions related to information that appears in the RFP, including those involving a preliminary $4 million project budget and a 12- to 24-month timeframe to raise funds.
“In my experience, until you’ve got an idea of what the plan is to build and some pretty pictures, the renderings, to go with it, it’s really hard to do some capital campaigning so this is step one,” Workman said. “The city obviously doesn’t have this money sitting in the bank, right, so we’re going to have to do some outreach for sure.”
Councilor Jessica Andrade pitched the idea of including language in the RFP for applicants to describe any experiences or knowledge of accessible design that exceeded ADA standards, a motion to that effect passing 5-0 with one abstention (Teresa Nielson) and one absent (Christopher McMorran).
The council then passed a motion 6-0 to authorize the release of the RFP for the library’s feasibility study.
In other news out of the Dec. 11 meeting:
• The council approved on a 5-1 vote (Andrade nay, McMorran absent) the wording of a press release related to the city manager’s annual job performance assessment.
• The council approved an ordinance on a 6-0 roll-call vote to grant an exclusive solid waste franchise to Republic Services.
• The council met in executive session for 16 minutes to consult with legal counsel regarding a matter related to possible litigation.
