Director to leave after library project's sound defeat
Waves of change are crashing around Gloucester, from City Hall to the 156-year-old public library.
The day after residents voted against a tax increase to fund the Sawyer Free Library renovation and expansion, library director Roger Brisson announced his resignation, citing disappointment with the election outcome.
By a vote of 2,735 to 1,607, residents on April 24 defeated a ballot question that would have allowed the city to collect $7 million beyond the limits of Proposition 2 1/2 to repay debt for the $15 million project.
The day after the vote, Brisson said he would leave at the end of this month. A former research librarian at Harvard and Penn State, he said he had taken the Gloucester job in early 2006 for the express reason of carrying out an expansion and renovation of the library.
"Everyone was very optimistic and hopeful that we had put together a pretty compelling package for the residents. But clearly the community was not ready for this. Gloucester is in a very serious financial condition and there many other things [voters] considered more important," said Brisson, 50, who also cited his frustration with chronic under funding of the library budget in his decision to leave.
Supporters had promoted the project as a way to meet the library's need for an upgrade and more space. They said the debt exclusion was needed for the city to meet its share of the project cost and to provide the required match for a $4 million state grant. The library planned to use the grant, the tax money, and $4 million in private funds to cover the $15 million project cost. With the ballot defeat, the state grant is lost and the project as proposed is now dead, according to officials of the library, which is run by a nonprofit but operates as a public facility.
The library's board of directors planned to meet last night to begin discussions about their next steps in addressing the library's building needs, and how to proceed in recruiting a new director, according to board president Mary Jane McGlennon.
"I really believed that this project could be a turnaround moment for Gloucester and for the downtown, and was a project that could have lifted the spirits of the citizens of Gloucester and made us realize once again what an incredible city we live in," McGlennon said.
McGlennon said she was surprised by the timing of Brisson's resignation, but not by the decision.
"I had conversations with him leading up to the vote that led me to infer he might move on if the vote result was not positive," she said.
"I think Roger helped us understand what a 21st-century library can be, and he accomplished some very positive things while he was here."
A general sense of unease about Gloucester's finances and the overall economy may explain the outcome of the vote, supporters said.
"I think we were all surprised at being beaten" by such a large margin, said Pat Earle, strategist for the campaign in support of the debt exclusion. "I think it just reflects the way the city of Gloucester feels right now. The city's financial situation is perilous.
"I think it was more in sorrow than in anger that they voted 'No.' "
Gloucester is struggling to balance a tight fiscal 2008 budget, a task that could involve closing a school and laying off teachers, among other measures.
Given those constraints, Ward 2 Councilor John "Gus" Foote, a supporter of the debt exclusion, said, "It probably wasn't the best time" to seek a tax increase for the library.
"People I talked to didn't know why there was an override for the library and they are laying off 20 odd teachers and closing a school, because they felt the school and teachers came first," he said.
Mayor John Bell, who announced Monday he will not seek reelection to a fourth term, perceived broader concerns than the library.
"The severity of the loss surprised many of us, but in reflection, I think it also shows the severity of concerns residents and voters have about their own financial futures in Massachusetts, the cost of taxes, the cost of housing, the uncertainty of a war being fought in Iraq." Bell said those issues led voters to "send once again the message that they cannot pay anymore."
Councilor at large and former mayor Bruce H. Tobey, another supporter of the debt exclusion, noted that the vote came in a week of national headlines about a dramatic slowdown in home sales and a sharp increase in foreclosures.
"Those are not good symptoms when you are looking to ask people to pay more in the way of real estate taxes," he said.
The Sawyer Free Library was founded in 1851 as an outgrowth of the Gloucester Lyceum, a lecture society that began in 1830. The library today encompasses 25,000 square feet in three contiguous buildings: a 1764 wooden former residence donated to the library by Samuel Sawyer in 1884; a 1913 two-story brick "stack wing"; and a 1976 brick addition.
The $15 million project would have involved construction of a 15,000-square-foot addition to the rear of the library; a major renovation of the 1764 and 1976 buildings; and replacement of the 1913 stack wing with a new structure.
While the project as envisioned over the past eight years is now dead, McGlennon said the board plans to develop a plan that is smaller in scope and seek private funds to realize it.
"I'm really excited about everyone's willingness to go forward," McGlennon said, "the positiveness that exists, the sense of passion for the library and its mission, and the willingness to keep working at trying to solve the library's problems." 