Dear Menlo Park City Council,
We are writing to urge you to press the pause button on moving forward pursuing a new Main Library at this time. We have lived in
Menlo Park for 22 years and are frequent library users. We admire how the library staff has developed programming that is both
creative and relevant to today's patrons. However, we view a brand new Main Library or major renovation to be a nice-to-have (vs a
need-to-have) project. In order to take advantage of Mr. Arrillaga's very generous offer, the City would need to take on
substantial debt to meet the terms of his donation. We do not support taking on such an amount of debt for the Main Library.
If the offer were to build a Belle Haven library instead of the Main Library, or if the Main Library rebuild were truly a
necessity, we think there would be less community debate and resistance. As it is, the Main Library still serves the community
very well and replacing it had not been a top priority until Mr. Arrillaga’s offer came along.
Sidney attended and expressed our thoughts above at all three of the Library Site Planning meetings held at the Main Library in
December 2017, January 2018, and February 2018. Many others at those meetings also questioned the need for an expensive renovation
or brand new building for the Main Library. We did advocate for prioritizing an expansion or brand new building for the Belle
Haven Library, as the Belle Haven Library is currently housed in a school building and is not open to the public during school
hours.
On a related topic, we do suggest the City could make more community space available for the children’s reading hours which enjoy
high demand – kudos to the librarians for creating such a widely-loved program. Could the City allow the Library to use the City
Council chambers for story hours or other community events? There would be plenty of room and it would be a creative way to
leverage greater use out of otherwise dormant space during the day/weekends. This would be an inexpensive solution that could be
implemented right now without additional funding or footprint.
In summary, while we would of course love to have a brand new library with all the 21stcentury bells and whistles, the financial
reality is that the City of Menlo Park has many needs and competing interests for our tax (and debt) dollars. We do not feel as if
a brand new Main Library building ranks highly as a need-to-have priority at this time.
Thank you very much for your service to our community and for considering our comments in your deliberation.
Respectfully,
Sidney & Doug Marks
