At its March meeting the Liberty Lake Library Board of Trustees discussed a Turner & Townsend work order to develop conceptual designs for a proposed library at the Townsquare site and set a fast public-engagement schedule leading to council review in early July.

Mark, a city staff member, told trustees the Turner & Townsend work order includes three deliverables (two of which are materially the same) that present either a library-only option or a library combined with community flex space. "We expect to get a project planned and scheduled from them sometime within the next couple of days," Mark said, describing a public-engagement phase that staff will use to shape conceptual layouts.

Why it matters: the design work and schedule will determine whether a bond or other financing option can be prepared in time for a ballot and how much public outreach the city must complete before council makes a funding decision.

Mark said city staff plan to present the conceptual layouts to the City Council in early July. He also confirmed a capital-funding workshop for council on March 25 at City Hall intended to introduce a more methodical approach to financing the city’s multiyear capital program. "The objective with that workshop is to get to start to get a better understanding and a more methodical approach to developing and delivering our capital program," he said.

Trustees discussed calendar constraints that would affect any ballot timeline. Mark described the filing deadline staff used to set the schedule: a measure must be submitted to the county 90 days in advance of the election collection date, and that constraint was used to work backward from an August 4 administrative deadline. "We reverse engineered [the timeline] because we have to have a ballot measure into the county 90 days in advance," he said.

Mark told the board the council has multiple financing options. If the council seeks to "guarantee the payments of the debt service" with the city’s full faith and credit, that would require a ballot measure; other options that do not create that level of guarantee would not require a ballot. He also noted the city has some capacity to issue debt without a tax increase, but council discretion remains the deciding factor.

Trustees and staff also noted recent history: prior ballot proposals tied to Townsquare planning were defeated in earlier cycles, and Mark summarized that work dating to master-plan efforts on 2007–08 and ballot measures in 2016 and 2017 that did not pass. That history, trustees said, factors into outreach planning and how the city will present options to voters.

Next steps: staff will begin the public-engagement phase, collect input for the conceptual layouts for each option, and return to council with the designs in early July. The board will be invited to participate in engagement and to review the conceptual plans before council action.

Votes at a glance: At the same meeting trustees approved the previous meeting minutes and the meeting agenda and later moved to adjourn. Those motions were adopted by voice/raise-of-hands; specific roll-call tallies were not provided in the transcript.

(Reporting note: quotes and attributions are taken verbatim from the board meeting transcript.)