At their regular meeting last Wednesday, the Board of Supervisors voted to postpone the construction of the new Crozet Library via a plan that halts construction projects for five years.
According to Mike Marshall, publisher of the Crozet Gazzette, in early November county staff put out a report warning residents and officials that the library’s construction could be postponed.
“I don’t agree with the vote,” Marshall told C-VILLE, adding that he wishes the Supervisors would have looked at different options more creatively.
Supervisor Ann Mallek, who represents Crozet, says that she considers this delay to be temporary.
“I am not willing to grant this anything more than a temporary setback at this point, because the library on schedule by 2012 would have been a tremendous boost to the resurgence of downtown Crozet and we were all counting on that,” she says. “I did vote for it. I didn’t feel there was any other alternative, because in order to live within our budget we have to do what we can.”
Mallek says that the priority for the board was to keep services available for those residents who need help.
Yet, Marshall says that the vote is not a very good government decision considering the option of using stimulus money and current advantageous construction prices. “The longer they delay, the more and more expensive it will get,” he says.
Although Marshall is “chagrined” by the vote, Crozet residents have learned to wait. In fact, according to Marshall, the library has been in the works since 1995. But will the delay postpone the vision of the Crozet Master Plan, which, among other aspects, advertises a more vibrant downtown?
For Marshall, it will. “It certainly hurts,” he says. “The library attracts people into downtown,” and without such a prominent public building, he says people might not be persuaded to go to downtown Crozet.
While the library would have been a vital part of downtown Crozet’s renaissance, Mallek believes that if the Streetscape project gets done efficiently, and other road projects could be accomplished, “making those improvements will also be another great step forward,” she says.
And although Mallek is looking at different sources of funding for the project, raising the tax rate is pretty much out of the question.
“I would have a very difficult time getting my board or the majority of my board to go along with it. And that’s the reality right now,” she says.
As approved, the design calls for 18,000 square feet of library space with an additional shelf space of around 5,000 square feet, a much larger facility compared to the 1,900-square-foot existing library.
In June, the estimated total budget for the project was $9.8 million, with $6 million going to construction only.
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