When the East Baton Rouge Parish Library Board of Control asked voters for a tax increase in 2005, among the promises it made to the public was to build a new south branch.
“Ten years later, as the board prepares to request another millage hike, the south branch remains as elusive as ever,” writes Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel in her latest column. “The history of why the library hasn’t gotten built is as maddening as it is illustrative of the follies of government, and it begs the question: Do we really need a new south branch?”
The south branch was originally set to be developed in the heart of Rouzan, Tommy Spinosa’s traditional neighborhood development in Southdowns, Riegel notes. The library board began discussions with the developer as far back as 2007. Years later, in 2010, it finally reached the broad terms of a deal: Spinosa would donate the land for the library and do the surrounding infrastructure work; the board would build the new branch.
“But Rouzan was slow getting off the ground, and the details of the agreement between the developer and the city-parish were never finalized,” Riegel writes. “By the time the two sides got down to hammering out the specifics, they couldn’t agree.”
After months of back and forth during much of 2013, Riegel says, the board decided to pull the plug on the Rouzan site and start over from scratch.
“It searched around for suitable sites, to no avail, so in 2014 it spent $10,000 on a site selection firm to identify locations. After months of waiting for a list and culling through them, it rejected them all for one reason or another,” she writes. “Now it’s mid-2015 and the board has decided to hire a real estate agent to help it scout for potential properties that are not yet on the market. Though it won’t have to shell out money for the brokerage services up front, if it ends up buying or leasing a site, it will pay a commission to the agent on the back end. Given the history of the south branch search, the odds are reasonably good that sale or lease will never happen.”
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