ARLINGTON — The election is over. Not enough voters wanted a new library, and now the task is to figure out how to provide services in a limited space.
Managing librarian Kathy Bullene said she will do her best.
“Our staff is very creative. We’ll have to continue to think outside the box because the size of our box isn’t changing,” Bullene said.
Arlington’s 5,000-square-foot library is about 27 years old and the city’s population has more than quadrupled to nearly 17,000 since the library was built.
On most weekdays, the library is crowded. Student backpacks and homework cover the tables during the school year and kids sit on the floor in the children’s area during the summer. There’s a line to use the nine computers with Web access, the four chairs in the magazine section are always occupied, and book browsers in the stacks often bump into one another.
“Anything we add, we’ll have to take something out,” Bullene said. “We can put in five more computers, but we’ll have to take out seating or bookshelves.”
Library staff probably will begin to offer library programs in other places in the city, Bullene said.
“But when you go off-site you lose the connection with the library. That’s sad, because if you offer a kids’ program on insects, the kids are not at the library to check out books on bugs,” she said. “We want to be a community gathering place, but it’s hard when there’s no place to sit down.”
Voters in the Arlington area did not deliver the 60 percent supermajority required on the May 20 ballot to issue $8.8 million in bonds to build a new library. It was the third time since 2000 that voters were asked to decide the library’s fate. The measure received 56.26 percent of the vote. In 2006, the measure fell short of the 60 percent needed to pass by just 28 votes.
Few of the supermajority measures around the state passed on May 20, said Sno-Isle Libraries spokeswoman Mary Kelly. When it was placed on the ballot, no one anticipated the downturn in the economy and the resulting reaction by taxpayers, she said.
Library board chairman Karen Hobson said city officials, Sno-Isle Libraries, the Friends of the Library and library staff will meet to figure out how to maintain services at Arlington Library.
“We’ll get together to offer the best we can,” said Hobson, who is not ruling out another campaign to support a bigger library.
“Someday,” she said.
Reporter Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427 or gfiege@heraldnet.com.
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