For at least five years the Española City Library has been requesting money from the state Legislature. Every year the amount increases.
Last year, the library finally got $300,000, to purchase architectural designs and blueprints for the City’s proposed renovation of the old Hunter Ford building into a new library and multimedia complex.
This year another $6.575 million was requested, to “plan, design, construct, renovate and equip a library and media center in Española in Rio Arriba county.” It wasn’t approved.
Meanwhile, none of last year’s appropriation, to design a new library, has been used, interim City Manager Joe Duran said, and library design hasn’t been on any recent City Council agendas.
The City has yet to decide whether to move to a new building or renovate the current library at the Lucero Center, Duran said.
The library now sits adjacent to the City’s swimming pool and weight room. Library patrons hear swimmers splashing and boxers hitting punching bags against a shared wall. There are no windows. Harsh fluorescent bulbs provide lighting.
Library Director Sherry Aragon guessed the mustard yellow carpeting and matching desk chairs date to the library’s move to the Lucero Center in 1972.
“When is the new library coming?” It’s a question Aragon said she often hears.
“Today I had people coming in at noon and had to tell them that they’d have to wait an hour to use the computer, and they did,” she said.
On a recent visit, three computers sat on a desk waiting to be set up. One, dedicated to searching the library’s collection, had been down for three weeks. The printer was on its last legs. There are no copier or fax machines.
“We can’t even collect fees for those services, which would go toward buying more books,” Aragon said.
Yet she was looking on the bright side.
“It’s a good building for now and I’m glad to be here,” she said.
Aragon didn’t imagine growing up to be a librarian. But one day a representative from the Native American Library Services in Washington, D.C. came to the Acoma Pueblo, where Aragon is from.
“She wanted to see our library, since for years they’d been sending us books,” Aragon said.
The woman from D.C. discovered that there was no library on the pueblo. The books were stored in boxes in a back room.
“She said to me, ‘We’re going to start a library,’” Aragon said, “and I said, ‘Who is?’”
Before she knew it, the woman had Aragon signed up for Americorp and working to establish a pueblo library. Aragon spent the next six years helping to build a full-fledged public library replete with satellite internet and plenty of computers—a sharp contrast with where she now finds herself.
Aragon was hired by previous City library director Teddie Riehl, who left the position in July, frustrated in her efforts to improve the facility. Riehl’s last straw came when the City made two hires.
“One of those temporary positions makes more than two of my people combined,” Riehl told the SUN at the time.
Now Aragon is in charge, with more modest expectations. Her 2013 budget request is an outlier compared to requests from other department heads—nearly 3 percent less than what the library was given in 2012. She said wanted to make the cuts before City Council did.
“I see now everything (Riehl) was talking about,” she said.
Yet Aragon still sees what the library could be, if it were more of a City priority, with a good copier machine, more computers, perhaps a comfortable area where teens might like to hang out—if not a new library altogether.
The City still can draw from last year’s $300,000 legislative appropriation to plan and design one.