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Joseph Alvarado
Save the Carnegie – Vote “NO” on Measure P
Why save the Carnegie?
The Carnegie Library is a vital part of San Rafael’s identity. It is located in the heart of San Rafael’s downtown, on San Rafael's main corridor, Fifth Avenue, where it is accessible and walkable for most San Rafael residents. Years of polling results indicate that the majority of San Rafael residents support this. The proponents of Measure P continue to ignore this fact.
If San Rafael’s Measure P is passed, the beloved Carnegie Library will be abandoned as a library and a cultural icon will be lost.
Measure P
Measure P proposes a 30-year bond that will
“…levy an annual special parcel tax in the City of San Rafael to fund the construction of a new Albert Park main library and community center, at the rate of $0.145 per square foot of improved building area and $75.00 per vacant parcel… continuing for thirty years or until construction bonds are satisfied.”
This property tax, paid by all San Rafael property owners/homeowners, will not provide funds to pay for increases in staffing and operating expenses that will be required.Since 2016, two bond measures have been passed for staffing, the last one, Measure D, will run concurrently with Measure P and will need to be placed on the ballot, again, in July of 2026.
Why so many new taxes?
Until the year 2000, local bonds for libraries, parks, police and fire facilities and other capital improvements required a two-thirds vote, but the passage of Proposition 39 lowered the voting requirement to 55 percent. When Prop. 39 was put to a vote, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Foundation opposed it, saying,
“Local general obligation bonds for libraries, parks, police and fire facilities and other capital improvements are repaid exclusively by property owners. Because a minority of the population is required to pay the entire amount, the California Constitution of 1879 established a two-thirds voter approval requirement for these bonds."
Now that it is much easier to pass bond measures like Measure P, many homeowners are seeing significant increases in the “Voted Indebtedness” column on their tax bills.
Significant Geographical Concerns at Albert Park
The Carnegie Library's current location is on geologically stable, high ground that is not a flood-prone area.The proposed Albert Park Library location is a low-lying, former marsh and prone to frequent flooding. This not only makes the Albert Park site unsuitable to address future sea-level rise but also unsuitable as an emergency control or refuge facility. (The Albert Park area already has to depend on flood control pumps in winter.)
Challenges at Albert Park
Vandalism, homelessness, and concerns about safety and accessibility make the Albert Park area undesirable as a site for a new Library and Community Center. The Carnegie site, however, is easily accessible and located within the “encampment protected zone” of Marin Academy.
The Future of the Carnegie?
Neither the City nor the Library Foundation have a plan for the future of the Carnegie Library if it is abandoned. The proposal to use it as a “resource center” lacks details about its transformation, where the funding for its conversion would come from, and other such critical issues.
The Library Foundation’s “Needs Assessment” was flawed
The most recent “Needs Assessment” done in 2017 by the City of San Rafael was flawed. It concluded that
"The Carnegie next to city hall does not offer sufficient space to meet the diverse and growing needs of our community.”
The Foundation consultant’s rationale for suggesting the City abandon the Carnegie Library, as the City’s main library, relied on a methodology based on recommended square footage per citizen. However, their assessment failed to include two major MARINet Libraries within the city limits of San Rafael. The omission of the square footage of the Marin County Civic Center Library and the Dominican libraries combined with the failure to pursue the renovation/expansion potential of the existing Carnegie Library negatively skewed the assessment’s findings.
In fact, if the consultants had considered all the public library spaces available and the Carnegie Library’s true potential for expansion and renovation, the results would have met or even exceeded the required ‘square footage’ standards. Remodeling the Carnegie and including the missing libraries would have been sufficient to achieve the needs goals, even if the Needs Assessment had omitted the Dominican facilities.
In addition, the population in San Rafael has been decreasing since the Needs Assessment was completed.
Technological Changes Will Impact Future Demand
The Needs Assessment failed to consider the tremendous impacts of technology on future demand for physical space, how libraries will function, and how information will be accessed in the future. The truth is that demand for library space is decreasing due to the impact of remote access via the internet, the use of a variety of personal communication devices, the digitization of print media, and the incredible impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on information access and dissemination.
The ubiquity of smartphones puts the “library” in the palm of your hand. All schools and public libraries will need to reevaluate the need for dedicated library space because the evolving role of libraries is changing so rapidly. Traditional library stacks with their inventory of physical books are not being used, as they once were, which creates the opportunity to rethink how physical library space can be better utilized.
None of this was accounted for in the previous study.
All this considered, there is no question that a new San Rafael library “needs assessment” should be undertaken, immediately, and no decisions should be made about the Albert Park proposal until that is completed.
As such, the library initiative should never have been put on the November ballot.
Alternative Plans Have Never Been Fully Explored
In 2010, San Rafael architect and member of the Foundation Board, Ron Kappe, worked with David Dodd, the Chief Librarian, on a plan to expand and renovate the Carnegie Library. Together, they developed a proposal to create a 40,000-square-foot facility in the existing location with a modern facade. In 2024 a new modeling was created that retains the existing Carnegie reading room. The floor plans are the same.
Although this scheme was never formally presented, it was provided to Al Boro, the mayor at that time, and circulated among the Library Foundation Board members. The Foundation even displayed a rendering image of the proposal on their website for years.
This reflected the fact that there has always been a strong preservationist sentiment among citizens and library users to retain the original Carnegie.
Voting “NO” on Measure P will open the possibility that more cost-effective and less impactful proposals to renovate and expand the existing Carnegie Library will finally receive the consideration they deserve.
Vote No on Measure P