West Boise Library Petition Presentation and testimony to be given this Tuesday, July 11th, at the City Council Budget Meeting
This Tuesday, July 11th, Boise City Council is meeting at the Boise City Hall at 6 PM to review the FY’24 budget. Several of our neighborhood association members will present a petition to improve library coverage in West Boise. We invite you to come and support this too.
Here’s a good link about how to testify/sign up/participate over zoom for the city council meeting if you can’t be there in person.
https://www.cityofboise.org/departments/finance-and-administration/city-clerk/public-meetings/#Participate.
If you plan to attend Tuesday’s meeting in-person you can sign up to testify at City Hall before the meeting. The earlier you sign up the earlier you will be able to testify. Note the start time for the meeting is 6 PM. Testimony is limited to three minutes per person testifying.
Many, if not most of us, have firsthand experiences or stories that reflect how important public libraries are to ourselves and our families. Consider if you have a story to tell that reflects on better access to a public library in west Boise.
| Taxes | We all pay equal taxes to support libraries, but we don’t have equitable access. |
| Cost Efficiency, Expediency West YMCA | A new, dedicated building would be preferred but we recognize this is expensive, the quickest most efficient path to improve access would be to lease space in an existing building. This could be done near the West YMCA in the Boise Research Center or other retail locations that have become vacant due to a trend away from brick-and-mortar retail. |
| Walkable City | We want Boise to be more walkable and bikeable. Part of making it more walkable and bikeable is having places to walk and bike to, within a reasonable distance. |
| Not Just Parks | We have good access to parks, for which we are grateful, but parks are not the only city service we care about. |
| Library Study | When the library study is completed in a year, the same coverage gap will exist. Can we not recognize this and begin to act now? |
| Library Study | The study doesn’t need to be completed to see where we have poor coverage. It’s obvious to anyone when they look at a coverage map of Boise. |
| Action Now | Action we could take now: Step 1) research different options – we can tell you about them, we know West Boise, we live there. Step 2) purchase land. Can we include money from this year’s budget to purchase land for a library in West Boise? |
| Action Now | We’ve identified locations near West Boise MacDevitt Park. We Don’t want to name it publicly. We’ve seen other potential locations disappear due to development. Great locations have been disappearing, West Boise is developed. |
| Action Now | It’s important to act sooner than later, as available space is only going away. |
Our great supporters out gathering petition signers!
This morning (July 8) neighborhood association members collected signatures in support of this petition at Albertson’s at Eagle and McMillan. You can sign this petition online at https://citizensforalibrary.org/west-boise. Tammy and Jeremy Rampton along with their daughter, Eve, and Clair Salisbury gather petition signatures outside Albertsons at McMillan and Eagle Road. We want to thank our local Albertsons for being a great supporter of Centennial Neighborhood.
West Boise Needs a Library Too – Door-To-Door Campaign Kicks Off Saturday, May 13, 2023
At our most recent board meeting, we agreed that having a library within or closer to our neighborhood would be a tremendous boost to our community. Supporters of this initiative will be going door to door on Saturday at 1:30 PM to collect signatures and distribute flyers. If you would like to help, please sign up here:
Past Updates:
Mark Salisbury updated CTNA tonight on the library meeting that was hosted by Mark and his wife, Amanda, last night.
“We had a great meeting last night! I’ve started working on a presentation for the library board / city council, which I shared with everyone who was present. I got some valuable feedback – thanks everyone who was here for your ideas. We got a little more organization, with several people volunteering to help this effort in a variety of ways. I’m excited to see where we go.
And the pie — lots of pie, it was delicious.
If you believe having a library nearby is worth some effort, I’d love to hear from you.
Thanks especially to Amanda Salisbury for all your help 
“
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