After a meeting described by some as long, thoughtful, and deliberative, the Renton Library Board took a similar position to the majority of Renton Council; they endorsed giving Renton voters the chance to decide for themselves whether to join the King County Library System (KCLS).

Meanwhile, Renton Libary management has been in discussions with King County Library System over some of the concerns that have been raised about this merger.

Some highlights are:

- KCLS has clarified that the Renton libraries would remain the home for the Renton book collection. (Each book in the system has a "home" that it returns to when it is not on hold by somewhere else in the system, and the Renton books would remain assigned to Renton... they would not be assigned to other libraries).

- KCLS clarified that they would have positions for all of the Renton staff at all levels of seniority, including pages and other part-time support.

- KCLS would use our existing library buildings initially, and eventually put a bond issue to the to voters in the geographic area to build replacement buildings if/when the community seemed supportive.


Renton City Council is considering putting this issue on the ballot early next year. We talked about trying for this November, but too much would have to happen too fast to meet some spring deadlines to make this happen... and we still want to ensure we have all of our questions, and the community's questions answered, before we ask people to decide on these issues.

Our library is at a crossroads

You, the citizens of Renton, will get to make the final decision. But Renton City Council decided in a six to one vote last night to recommend annexing to the King County Library System. This was a significant change in direction from a year ago, when the prevailing mood on the council was to remain independent.

There were a few reasons for the change, but the most important one is the economy. The Renton Library System has not been keeping pace with the growth in the population, so we knew we were going to have to look at some major capital expansion and growth in annual operations funding. However, with our significant drop in tax sources linked to the economy, like sales tax, admissions tax, and business head tax, we are strained to the limit just to meet current city service demands. In contrast, the King County Library System relies only on a property tax revenue stream that is stable even when real estate assessments drop; the total funds taken in by the library district increase modestly each year, regardless of real estate values.

Note that the King County Library System is not part of the King County Government-- they share the name only. Hence, the King County Library system is insulated from the draconian cuts that will be necessary to shed tens of millions of dollars of potential red ink from the county.

Other factors that make the King County Library System (KCLS) more appealing that first thought are the KCLS answers to several questions our staff put the them. Some of us (including me) were worried that they would close our Highlands library-- but KCLS actually says their formulas call for a much larger library in the Renton Highlands. In addition, they are putting a new libary in Newcastle, reworking Newport Hills, planning to rebuild Skyway, and talking about another library near the Kent/Renton border in the Benson Hill area. They would use existing Renton facilities in the near term, but ultimately build a new Renton main library and a new highlands library. Both library branches would be larger than the present ones, but not as big as we would have had to make them because much of the King County distribution system is centralized in Issaquah. Hence, the buildings would not need as much administrative space as any we built if we remained independant.

This also simplifies growing confusion we were running into as more and more of our new residents found themselves in our city limits, but also in the King County Library System district. A growing number of residents were paying for service and new capitol improvments in both sides.

Also, Renton has had to pay more money each year to KCLS as part of our reciprocal-use agreement, which is pegged to how many books Renton citizens check out of KCLS vs. how many Renton books are checked out by KCLS patrons. When we started this agreement about 10 years ago, with a city population of about 47,000, the numbers were pretty much even and there was hardly any payment to speak of. Now, with a population of around 85,0000, we are seeing lots of KCLS use by Renton residents...so we have to pay KCLS a quarter million dollars a year to even things up.

KCLS also assures us they have a good procedure for transferring most, if not all, of our staff. When Auburn joined the KCLS a few years ago all of the staff were picked up by King County Library System.

On the negative side, an annexation to KCLS means reduction of local control, and many library power-users are concerned that we will not have the large and accessible local book collection we now enjoy. KCLS certainly has a lot of books, but many of them will not be housed in Renton, and will take ordering by patrons to get onto our shelves. Also, the service is likely to become less personal, as KCLS is an institution used to handling one million patron visits per month... not a formula for being flexible.

Also, an annexation to KCLS will cost us all in taxes-- not any more than an updated first-class independent library in Renton, but more than we pay now. Hence, this decision is one for the voters to contemplate before jumping into.

After a 90 minute deliberation on Monday night, council still had several remaining questions and issues to resolve, but all council members except Marcie Palmer recommended moving ahead with the next steps for annexing to KCLS. Marcie brought a lot of data to the discussion, and had thoroughly studied statistics, library board minutes, and surveys, along with bringing tremendous personal experience as a patron of both systems. She remained unconvinced that this was the right move, even while the other six of us voted for it.

In the end, it will be Renton voters that decide whether to annex to the King County Library System. Our vote last night just kicks off the process to go to a ballot, and we still have to collect recommendations from our library board and up-to-date cost figures and proposed working agreements.

How do you think you will vote?

A Renton Citizen and frequent reader has suggested that I should get a discussion started about the future of Renton Libraries; do you think we should join the King County system, or show we remain independent.
A recent article on the Renton Reporter gave the background on this issue. In short, we commissioned a new Master Plan, to help us figure out the future of the libraries. In particular, this issue becomes important because our city has been growing so much, and if Fairwood decides to annex it becomes even more urgent....Fairwood includes a King County Library.

The Renton Reporter article quoted a council member as saying that the Renton Council initially prefers to stay independent, but there are some council members that have not really formed an opinion on this issue yet. If anything, I am probably leaning toward joining the King County System. I would be very interested in this option if we could get King County to build a new Library in our downtown. Seattle Water utility and the Department of Fisheries have shown some interest in a Salmon/rivers education facility in the past.... maybe our existing library over the river could be converted for this use. Or maybe it could become a new event center.

Most of us have not really decided what we should do with our library system.

So we would love to get your input on this.

A cute little blog entry about our library Click here to see it