2013 could be ‘Year of the Library’ in Wasilla

WASILLA — If the city and Friends of Wasilla Public Library have their way, 2013 will be the “Year of the Library.”

As friends of the library members prepare to lobby city council at its meeting Monday to include a request for state help in funding a planned 24,000-squre-foot, $14 million library, mayor Verne Rupright said the city’s already on the same wavelength.

“We’re on it, man,” he said, adding that a request for $7 million to fund half the construction costs “is on our wish list and we’re going to do it.”

That’s welcome news for friends of the library members who have worked for the better part of two decades to replace the city’s small library on Main Street, said the group’s vice president Julie Ede.

“I’m sure it is already included as a priority and that’s a very good thing,” Ede said. “That means Friends of Wasilla Public Library have been pretty successful in their lobbying.”

Although the city is pursuing state monies to fund half the construction, momentum for the project has accelerated during the past several years, Rupright said. The city purchased the Meta Rose Square property in downtown with the original intention of converting it to a new library. When that didn’t work out, Wasilla worked out an agreement with the Mat-Su Borough and Mat-Su Borough School District to donate four acres — worth about $1 million — at the intersection of Swanson and Crusey streets in Wasilla as the future home for the new library.

How securing funding for the other half of the project cost is the next hurdle, Rupright said. Last year, the mayor proposed raising the city’s sales tax by 1 percent, with .5 percent of that reserved for capital projects, beginning with the library. The council declined to act on that proposal, but with new faces on the council after last October’s municipal election, Rupright said he plans to bring the sales tax alternative back.

“We still have to look at that piece of it, of that funding,” he said. “Is it bonding? Why raise that tax debt when you don’t have to?”

Rupright said he will bring the sales tax proposal to the council within the next couple of months and hopes to begin physical work on the site this year.

“I’d like to get started this year,” he said. “I’d like to at least get some dirt turned. We’re right at the engineering stage, and it won’t take any time to do that. We could have (a new library by the end of 2014) if everything goes the way it should go. Everybody I talk to thinks it’s a good idea, they think it makes sense with forward funding.”

Although city council can raise the sales tax without a vote, Rupright said he will ask the council to put the tax to residents in the form of an advisory vote to gauge public support.

“Let’s see what they think,” he said.

That this could be the year when ground is finally broken on a new Wasilla Public Library is appropriate, Ede said, as 2013 also marks the 75th anniversary of the city having a library.

“Few people are aware of how long citizens of Wasilla have supported a public library,” she said. “I’m not sure if we’ll get there (this year), but it’s really exciting to me.”

Although she’s excited the project is moving forward, Ede said she hopes a previous pledge doesn’t come back to haunt her. “I told (the friends of the library board) that I refuse to die before we have a new library.”

Contact reporter Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.