Remodeling of Cedar River Library was presented by city as an option before and after KCLS annexation election

In my previous blog entry about the library, I explored the often-repeated myth that voters in the February 2010 KCLS annexation election knowingly voted to move the downtown library. In that blog entry, I covered the fact that the Renton Reporter, our only local newspaper at the time of the election, never ran a single story that indicated that a vote for KCLS was a vote to move the library– and in fact they implied the opposite in one of their editorials a week before the election.

In this blog entry, I simply want to document that the city information to the public has always presented the remodeling of the Cedar River Library as a viable option for meeting the needs of KCLS. Consider this presentation to the City Council Committee of the Whole in May 2011, fifteen months after the KCLS annexation election. Clearly, the city was continuing to consider the Cedar River location viable. KCLS representatives even participated in the presentation of these site options at the May 2011 council meeting.

Here is an excerpt:

Note that the first site option for the downtown library is the “Existing Library.” Since the city and KCLS were obviously still discussing site options fifteen months AFTER the KCLS election, and the existing site was on the list of options, there is simply no way that anyone can support a claim that voters knew they were choosing to move the downtown library when they cast a vote to join KCLS. No one could have “known” such a thing, because the council had not made the decision.

(The council, not the voting citizens, made the decision on the proposed library location in a 4-to-3 split vote, on June 21 2011–16 months after the KCLS annexation election)