This part of Boise has no library branch. Some residents aren’t happy. What the city says
Some residents of West Boise are pushing for a brick-and-mortar library to be closer to their neighborhoods.
At Boise’s City Council budget hearing this month, close to a dozen residents came to agitate for a new library in what they called the “library gap” of West Boise.
“West Boise needs equitable library services,” said Mark Salisbury, a Boise resident who started a group called Citizens for a Library. The group has started a petition, which Salisbury said has more than 800 signatures.
“I ask that we delay no further in taking action to improve library access,” Salisbury said.
The group has created a map of Boise, with a purple-colored, two-mile radius superimposed over each of the existing libraries in Boise, Meridian, Garden City and Ada County. Salisbury said he thought two miles is a reasonable distance within which residents would be comfortable biking to their library.
There’s a gap in West Boise, where no purple covers the map.
The push for a new library comes as the Boise Library system embarks on a planning process for what facility needs it will have in the coming decades. City leaders say any new buildings could be years down the road. Some residents think that’s too slow.
‘We want this for you’
Jessica Dorr, the library’s director since 2020, told the council this month that the library’s Board of Trustees recently approved a new strategic plan, which involved months of resident feedback about what the primary uses for the library are. The library plans to use data to focus its efforts and measure its impact.
During the coming fiscal year, the library asked for $300,000 to work on its facilities plan, Dorr said. The prior facilities plan, which dates from 2000, is what guided the Boise Library to build and acquire space for its four branch locations.
After that plan is finished would be when the library adds any new locations.
That doesn’t sit well with some residents.
“This study feels like just another government step when the gap is obvious,” said Jennifer Froerer.
While City Council members said they supported more library access, they also said that new libraries would be expensive, and that there could be easier ways to get residents closer to library materials.
Council Member Jimmy Hallyburton noted that the cost of a brand new library could be tens of millions of dollars, which would trigger a need to get resident approval for library projects that cost more than $25 million. Boise voters passed a ballot initiative requiring such voter approval in 2019, putting the kibbosh on then-mayor David Bieter’s efforts to build a new downtown library.
Council Member Colin Nash said he encouraged resident activists to think about what they want and how long they want it to take.
“For those of you who feel like the bureaucracy of what we’re doing is too slow for you, I want to communicate to you the urgency that we feel to deliver on what you want and what you need,” he said, noting that libraries like the branch locations at Collister and Hillcrest — both of which are in strip malls — cost a lot less than new buildings.
While a new building could cost between $25 and $40 million, the 10-year leases on strip mall locations are around $1 million each, he said.
“We hear you, we feel your sense of urgency,” Nash said. “We want this for you.”
Council Member Luci Willits, who represents West Boise, said libraries are “the fundamental basis for our world.”
“If it was up to me, we would suck a bunch of money into it tomorrow,” Willits said. “But if we look at the long-term needs of the city, we have to see that we have to have a comprehensive plan.”
