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Lackluster Fundraising Looms over San Diego LibraryCalifornia officials are threatening to renege on a $20-million grant to help build a new main library in San Diego due to almost two years of stalled fundraising efforts by the San Diego Public Library Foundation. If the state backs out, observers fear that a complex private/public formula to pay for the $185-million facility would collapse.Richard Hall, library bond act manager at the California State Library, said in the September 2 San Diego Union-Tribune that, while no deadline has been set, he anticipates a decision to be made at the municipal level if the foundation has not secured sufficient funds by the end of the year, when the site will be ready for construction to begin. “If you get to a point that it’s clear nothing is happening, it’s not prudent to allow that to continue and extend a grant for library construction for what appears to be no purpose,” he said. “If you have land sitting there, it would be good to make revenue on it,” agreed Darren Greenhalgh, the city’s senior civil engineer for engineering and capital projects, reiterating his July 5 warning to the library board that Mayor Jerry Sanders could opt to build a parking lot on the site for the nearby major-league baseball stadium. The library foundation has raised only $3 million toward its $85-million goal—a commitment that rose last fall from $50 million when the project’s cost estimate leaped upward from the $150 million foreseen in 2004. A multibillion-dollar deficit in the municipal pension system, which triggered the 2005 resignation of then-Mayor Dick Murphy, is fueling doubt among local philanthropists about whether the city can afford to run a new main library, explained San Diego Foundation President and CEO Bob Kelly. He told the Union-Tribune that underwriting the library project would otherwise “have been a done deal, a no-brainer.” “It’s daunting, certainly, but fundraising in the best of times is difficult and challenging,” SDPL Foundation Chairwoman Judith Harris said. Mel Katz, who serves as library board chairman as well as vice-chairman of the foundation, told the newspaper he hopes to announce $50 million in donations by the end of December. City Council member Kevin Faulconer, for one, has indicated he is willing to wait, asserting, “It’s my bias to allow the passionate people out there knocking on doors and asking for funds to continue as long as they want to.” Posted September 8, 2006. |
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