Though the cost to build a new library downtown may increase to $21 million, East Baton Rouge Parish Library Executive Director David Farrar says only the $19 million approved by the library board in September will be included in the budget he presents to the Metro Council on Wednesday. The library board generates its own financing via a 10-year, voter-approved tax, but the Metro Council must also OK its budget each year. Mayor Kip Holden included the downtown library in the budget he presented to the council last week.
Farrar says he doesn’t have any indication of whether the Metro Council will support the construction of a new downtown library. To extract the item from the budget, nine members of the 12-member council would have to vote against dedicating the funds. “I don’t want to presume anything about the council. But what I hear is that the council is split; they really don’t know which direction to go as an entire body,” says Farrar, today’s speaker at the Baton Rouge Press Club.
The council is expected to vote on budgets Dec. 8. While some are calling for a rehab of the existing downtown library that would cost less than a replacement, Farrar says the library board made an “implicit promise” to voters to build new facilities when the library tax rate was renewed five years ago. “In 2005 we told you what we would do if the tax passed—we would build buildings,” he says. “When I got here two years ago, we had $100 million in the bank. Well, you can only buy so many computers and so many books for 13 buildings. So, I would think that $100 million has to go toward new construction.” Meanwhile, three other library branches are also being built and progressing as planned, Farrar says. New, $6 million facilities at the Fairwood branch and Rouzan development are both expected to break ground in May or June, he says. Plans for a $43 million replacement of the library system’s main branch on Goodwood Boulevard are also progressing, Farrar says.
