White Center Now: The blog about White Center

The issue of potentially consolidating the White Center and Boulevard Park Libraries has resurfaced – five months after it was tabled – and you’re asked to speak up before it’s too late. Just got the word from North Highline Unincorporated Area Council president Barbara Dobkin that it’s on next Tuesday’s library-board agenda:

The board has not revealed any specific sites for the new facility other than saying they are looking at property on 128th Street, SW, nor have they stated when construction might start, or how long they will keep the existing 2 libraries open in the meantime. There is opportunity for public comment at this meeting, which is being held in the KCLS Service Center, 960 Newport Way, Issaquah on November 29 at 5 pm. We would ask that all concerned residents of this community, who voted to pass the library bond levy in 2004 for a new expanded White Center Library which was to be built at the same site, and update and improvements to the existing Blvd Park Library, contact the Library Board by mail: Board of Trustees, King County Library System, 960 Newport Way NW, Issaquah, WA 98027, or e-mail boardoftrustees@kcls,org, or show up a the meeting on Nov 29 and let the board know what you think about their plans.

The library system’s rationale for possible consolidation is outlined in this document.

Story and photos by Deanie Schwarz
Reporting for White Center Now

More than 50 community members were in attendance as the King County Library Services Board of Trustees met in Issaquah Tuesday, hoping to have their collective voices heard regarding the North Highline Library Service Recommendation to consolidate the White Center and Boulevard Park libraries.

(From left, Liz Giba of NHUAC, Burien City Councilmember Rose Clark, WCCDA’s Virgil Domaoan, King County Councilmember Joe McDermott, NHUAC president Barb Dobkin)
The White Center Library Guild presented its petition (as reported here) to the Board with just shy of 1,800 signatures. Comments to the Board were broad, repeating many of the same issues presented in previous meetings. But the perceived lack of effective outreach to the regular WC and Boulevard Park library users was pointed out by Virgil Domaoan, community builder director of the White Center Community Development Association, who lives in Boulevard Park.

He joined the petition efforts initiated by the White Center Library Guild and discovered during their doorbelling campaign that people had not heard about the potential library closures and were concerned how they would get to another location to use a computer every day. He pointed out these are families who do not have the computers commonly found in other neighborhoods where internet access and computer ownership is common place. Domaoan said only one person refused to sign the petition, a mother who wanted her son to be present when she signed it so he could witness what she was doing as a civic lesson.

Greg Duff, former North Highline Unincorporated Area Council member who is a candidate for Burien City Council, told the Board that his petition drive at the recent Burien Wild Strawberry Festival resulted in two main takeaways from the public he spoke with: It was suggested that Board members themselves visit the Boulevard Park and White Center libraries any day around 4:00 PM to see for themselves the high volume of computer users. The second takeaway was why should they, as voters, ever vote for a library bond again when they were lied to about the 2004 bond?

Astha Tada, speaking to the Board as a former teacher and as a Guild Member, wore an 18-pound backpack as she spoke. That’s the average weight of what kids carry every day back and forth to school, saying she learned that when she “googled” it in her research. In true teacher fashion, she wore it to illustrate the unwieldy weight children would be expected to bear while walking even further to a new library location from school and home because, she said, there will be no transportation options for them when they do not have money for a bus.

Safia Jama told the Board through a Somali interpreter that she is the mother of six children raised in White Center for the last 15 years. “Every day I have taken my children to the library in White Center. My children are in elementary, middle and high school and university. I am not lying. All of them use the library every day.”

Having heard all of these and many other passionate and articulate speakers, the Board spared any debate regarding convening an Executive Session to hear the staff’s proposed sites for a new library, as Director Ptacek suggested the Board do as the agenda outlined. The agenda was changed and a motion was made and immediately approved to delay any decisions on consolidation until further information was available about the potential for the Burien annexation of North Highline.

White Center Now contributor Deanie Schwarz covered today’s King County Library Board meeting, and says board members have decided again to put off a decision about potentially consolidating the White Center and Boulevard Park branches. This time, they say they want to wait until there is more information about Burien’s annexation intent; as reported here earlier, Burien is now studying the possibility, with financial feasibility updates expected later this summer. More details to come.

If you went by the site of what was scheduled to be the White Center Library Guild fundraising yard sale today – sorry, they decided to postpone it because of the rain. The Guild is tentatively looking at rescheduling it for next Saturday, but will send official information when the decision’s made.

Here’s the official flyer – be there!

Story and photos by Deanie Schwarz
Reporting for White Center Now

Members of the White Center Library Guild have kicked off a signature drive for a petition that will be presented to the King County Library Services Board of Trustees later this month.

Guild President Rachel Levine (far left in top photo) told WCN the Guild will continue gathering signatures from all ages of the libraries’ users through June 16 at various locations, including stations at the libraries.

The White Center Library Guild petition reads:

“We, the undersigned, wish to maintain the White Center and Boulevard Park libraries in their current locations;

Accessible libraries are crucial to the academic improvement of our children who struggle to overcome poverty;

We ask the KCLS Board of Trustees to delay any decision about the future of our libraries until after annexation is resolved.”

Tonight at the 34th District Democrats’ meeting, Liz Giba told that group the petition got about 100 signatures in just a matter of one hour.

At the most recent meeting of the KCLS Board on May 25, a discussion of consolidating the Boulevard and White Center libraries was postponed after appeals from the Guild and King County Councilmember Joe McDermott sought delay of any final decision until the issue of annexation of the unincorporated North Highline area has been discussed by the city of Burien.

The board postponed a decision but asked the staff to provide it with suggested locations of potential new-library sites at the June 28 board meeting at the Issaquah Library Services Center.

Before then, on June 18, the KCLS Board will have its next Planning Meeting at the Burien Library which, according to Levine, in part determines the agenda for the next Board meeting. It will be open to the public to attend, but does not allow for public comment. Two days later, the Burien City Council is scheduled to begin discussions about annexing the remaining North Highline unincorporated area. Elected city leaders have sent a letter to the KCLS Board requesting a delay of any library consolidation decision until the Burien annexation discussion has approached a more definitive conclusion, perhaps by mid-summer.

One more note: Legislators from the 34th and 11th districts have sent a letter both opposing the consolation and exhorting the library trustees to at least wait until there’s an annexation decision. Read it here.

Story and photos by Deanie Schwarz
Reporting for White Center Now

We’ve already reported that, when the King County Library Services Board of Trustees met Tuesday evening in the North Bend Library, board members voted to delay a potential vote on the Library Service Area Analysis for North Highline and related staff recommendations. Here are details of how that unfolded:

Speakers advocating for a delay in any vote to proceed with consolidation of the Boulevard Park and White Center Library’s included King County 8th District Councilmember Joe McDermott. He told the Board that the issue of potential annexation for the areas remained very much in flux, since Seattle’s councilmembers have said they will revisit the issue next February, but won’t stand in the way if Burien wants to pursue annexation sooner.

Considering that, and the indication that Burien’s council may start annexation discussion this summer, Councilmember McDermott encouraged the Board to delay any action or vote regarding the libraries for at least a year when such consideration might be more appropriate, or at least might provide enough time for the process to move forward more definitively.

Director Bill Ptacek said that the Board had already delayed a decision regarding the North Highline area and that the interim result of that delay was the Library Service Analysis recently conducted by surveying people online and over the phone. The surveys, according to Project Manager Jennifer Wiseman, provided a lot of feedback regarding much-needed improvements to the Boulevard Park and White Center Libraries which would be addressed by the now seven-year old 2004 bond funds. The survey also, she said, “tested” the consolidation idea via two questions and suggested there’s support for it – in the first question, about 65% support via the phone surveys (800 respondents) and 44% online. Then, when the second question was asked with specific details about consolidation, the support increased 5% on the phone interviews and 10% on the online questionnaires, yielding just slightly over 54% approval online). Wiseman also noted that the online respondents were not representative of the community and skewed the results because they were predominantly white female college graduates over 50.

White Center Library Guild President Rachel Levine and North Highline Unincorporated Area Council members Pat Price (a Boulevard Park resident) and Barbara Dobkin (a White Center resident) also spoke. Price pointed out to the Board that White Center has a high percentage of people without vehicles, as well as little east-west bus service, so the walking distance from schools and homes to libraries is important. Dobkin told the Board that she and other voters who supported the 2004 bond did so with the understanding that bond funds would be put toward improvements as designated within the bonds, not a closure or consolidation. “This isn’t what we voted for.”

Ptacek, in addressing the reallocation of the 2004 bond funds, said that the recommendation to reallocate the bond funds to a new library are based on the “good bids we’ve been getting” for construction. The Library Guild’s Levine expressed her concerns about the impartiality of the agency that conducted the surveys, but also read a letter on behalf of the Guild vowing to continue to work together with the KCLS Board.

A community member and retired teacher who now volunteers at Cascade and works with White Center youth in service projects held up a photograph of the kids “to whom we have a moral responsibility.” Kids in the Highline area are out of school on Fridays early and they need a safe place to study, away from crowded, noisy homes and where they have access to resources, she said, imploring the Board not to forget the children of White Center.

Board Trustee Bill Spitzer moved that any decision be postponed until the next Board meeting in June (to be held in Issaquah at the Library Services Center). He said that he was reluctant to vote with only three of the five Board members present. He also said he was sensitive to the logistical dilemma for White Center residents who might not have been able to attend a meeting 45 miles away, even though more than a dozen community meetings have been held on the matter.

With that, the motion was seconded, and the action item to address the North Highline Library Service recommendations was delayed until at least next month’s meeting. Board President Eadie asked the staff to provide the Board a list of potential sites, if any are known, for a new North Highline location at that meeting.

Will the King County Library Board vote to consolidate the White Center and Boulevard Park libraries? It’s on the agenda today for their 5 pm meeting – at the North Bend Library. Find the agenda linked here. White Center Now will be there and we’ll let you know what happens.

The future of the King County Library System branches in White Center and Boulevard Park has been discussed repeatedly during the debate over annexation. Suddenly, there is the possibility that the county may consolidate the two, and we have just received this letter from King County Councilmember Joe McDermott expressing opposition:

To Board of Trustees, King County Library System:

I am dismayed that the King County Library System Board of Trustees would consider consolidation of the Boulevard Park and White Center Libraries at this time.

To the best of my knowledge, a formal proposal to have staff pursue plans for consolidation first became public on May 12. To think that the KCLS Board might take action on May 24, a mere 12 days later, at a meeting scheduled to be held far from North Highline – in North Bend – is extremely dismissive of my constituents. Further, it fails to recognize their hard work in advocating for their community’s needs.

While the timing issue itself is enough to delay the vote, there is also the issue of boundaries and service. For years KCLS has failed to replace and renovate these facilities despite their specific inclusion in the 2004 bond measure, citing uncertainty over annexation and proximity to what may become part of Seattle. With Seattle showing no initiative at this time and Burien having the potential to advance a vote as early as next spring, to take action based on potential annexation by Seattle is shortsighted at best.

I urge the King County Library System Board of Trustees to postpone any action that advances consolidation of the White Center and Boulevard Park Libraries. Further, I renew my call for KCLS to deliver on their 2004 promise to voters and take up replacement and expansion of the White Center Library.

-Joe

Joe McDermott
King County Councilmember, District 8

Coming up one week from Saturday!

The White Center Library drop box is gone – they’re all gone, except downtown and Tukwila. So unless you can make it to one of those boxes, you need to get your ballot in the mail – with a stamp – by tonight. The King County Library System levy is the big deal today – read about it here.

UPDATE FROM ORIGINAL POST: The King County Council is on “furlough” this Friday, but the rest of county operations will be running as usual.