SHAWANO (NBC 26) — The Shawano County Library is facing spacing issues and aging infrastructure. They've been asking for a new building for years, but the county is yet to find a solution.
- Library director, Staci Rubenzer, says the library has been working for the past 10 years on getting a new building.
- Rubenzer says they don't have enough space and the infrastructure is crumbling.
- At its Sept. 23 board meeting, the Shawano County Board of Supervisors passed on a new option for the library, which would have included purchasing a $975,000 property.
On Tuesday, the Shawano County Library has dozens of visitors, including a local knitting club.
"This group has been going for over 30 years," Mary Ann Wilharm-Rudie, a member of the knitting club, which meets weekly at the library, says. "Met many wonderful people here."
The library was built in 1960, then remodeled in 1990.
Rubenzer says the building is outdated for a modern library.
Among other issues, the top floor bathrooms are not ADA compliant, the HVAC system is out of date, the library has dealt with mold and flooding, the roof is bowing and Rubenzer says the library sometimes randomly smells of sewage.
More than infrastructure issues, Rubenzer says the space is too small. She says a facility assessment from 2018 found the library needs at least an additional 14,000 square feet. She says they're unable to add programming, such as a community kitchen or a job pod, because of their lack of space.
“We don’t have the space to provide the library programming that this community needs and deserves," she says. "Our staff wants to do amazing things here, and we don't have the room. We don't have the resources here. We have wonderful funding from our friends group, but we don't have the space."
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Rubenzer says the library has been pushing for a new building for 10 years, but the County has been unable to find a solution.
The County Board has discussed several options over the years, including multiple churches and downtown buildings, or demolishing the current building and rebuilding on the same site.
Most recently, the County Board turned down the purchase of a $975,000 building at its Sept. 23 meeting. The purchase did not receive the two-thirds support needed to move forward, so the building was passed on.
The building is currently affordable housing, which was a reason some board members voted against the purchase.
"Part of my concern is do we have other housing in the city here that would be available for them at that time, and would it be of equal rent to them?" supervisor Collin Pomplun said.
Some board members questioned whether a new building was needed.
"I guess the real question here is, do we need a brand new library?" supervisor Jeremy Gretzinger said at the meeting. "Obviously the building is still operable, they're still in there, so it doesn't have to come down."
Others said they wanted to see a plan for the new library before committing to a large purchase.
"I don't agree with spending that kind of money on something that we, number one, as was stated, there's no plan for," supervisor Joe Miller said. "We're nowhere near in any position to spend that kind of money on something today that may or may not happen."
Rubenzer says they can't finalize a project plan, feasibility study or a fundraising strategy until they have a set property and location.
"All of this becomes cyclical....For fundraising, we have to have a library building plan to be able to show potential donors what a library can look like in our community," she says. "It’s not just frustrating, it’s heartbreaking... because we know what we could be doing to serve the community, and right now, with the footprint of this building, we can’t do it.”
Rubenzer says she doesn't want to spend money on repairs if the library will need to move eventually anyways.
“How much are we as a community willing to spend to continue to fix these issues without addressing the need for a larger space?" she says. "Libraries help support their local economies, and yes, we are facing hard economic times, but libraries are answers to that. We are part of the solution."
You can see photos of the library on the county website.
The next County Library Board meeting is on Oct. 12, then the Board of Supervisors will meet on Oct. 21.
