Proposed Pima library closures halted to make plans for deeper community feedback

Pima County residents were shocked and upset by a draft proposal in August to close or downsize five libraries — most by the end of 2024.

One month later, following an Arizona Luminaria report on the potential closures, residents packed a library advisory board meeting, offering emotional feedback to library management. The broad public backlash against the draft prompted officials to respond: The plan will be revamped after first holding an extensive community engagement process. Any proposed closures are up for discussion, county leaders say.

“I don’t want us to presuppose that we are going to close Santa Rosa or Library X, we want this to be indeed a co-creation,” said Deputy County Administrator Francisco García, who was present at a library advisory board meeting held Tuesday, Sept. 24. “We want this to be the starting point.”

The closure of several branches, including the downsizing of Tucson’s downtown library, are part of a series of proposals for the Pima County Public Library system laid out in a memo and draft report shared to the Pima County Board of Supervisors by County Administrator Jan Lesher dated Aug. 16.

Up next

At the regularly scheduled library board advisory meeting , set to take place Thursday Oct. 3 , library leadership is expected to share a more detailed outreach plan.

Advisory board members called a special meeting Tuesday to further discuss the report. A special meeting can be called if three board members have made the request in writing, and the board is then given five days to schedule the meeting.

In the final section of the meeting, a majority of board members voted to delay the library’s planned outreach survey for a month to allow library stakeholders to weigh in on the questions.

Among the library stakeholders would be leadership at Friends of the Pima County Public Library and The Pima Library Foundation, suggested board member Sharon Foltz.

The current draft of the survey, prior to stakeholder review, includes questions about how often Pima County residents have visited the library website, which library location they have visited and what services they have used, said library director Amber Mathewson.

The survey is the first part of a public engagement that Mathewson said was in the planning stages for October and November.

After that, the library would revamp its proposal for system changes and then bring them to the board of supervisors next spring, at the earliest.

The Pima County Board of Supervisors has the authority to vote on any closures or other major changes to the library system, while the advisory board makes recommendations to library leadership.

Ongoing concerns about libraries vision

Throughout the meeting, advisory board members shared their concerns about the proposal to close libraries, and how that squared with the plans to build a library system that would continue to expand community engagement.

“The specificity of the things you want to take away pale in comparison to the specificity of the things you want to add,” said board chair Mariana Padias. On the planned outreach meetings of one per district, Padias said it was “incredibly unambitious particularly in the districts where they are going to do the closures.”

Some of the library’s proposals for future efforts like book-mobiles or pop-up libraries were less detailed in the report because the director of the community engagement department job was currently vacant, said library leadership. “It was really really bad timing in that regard,” said library services manager Reneé Bibby.

Moving ahead, library advisory board members suggested the library system hold a series of events at the libraries where closures are proposed as a way to make sure those communities learn about the draft plan.

“I want to see how all these different stakeholder communities will be addressed,” said board member Mary Ann O’Neil. “We know there are a lot of places where people’s information is just word of mouth.”

Advisory board members also noted the trauma they expected to come from any effort to close libraries, and that those proposed for Santa Rosa Library and the Frank De La Cruz-El Pueblo Library would impact communities that had already been hurt by city development decisions in the past. In particular, the destruction of the neighborhood called Barrio Libre or La Calle to build the downtown Tucson Convention Center, still held scars.

“As a Pima County resident, I would say as you make your plan… please remember that the library is a service not a business,” said board member Craig Kleine. “Remember that no matter how well we communicate, one day people will show up at a library and it will be closed.”

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