Vote no: Liberty Lake leaders need to listen to what the community really wants

Our city of Liberty Lake is a beautiful area and many of the things are exceptionally well thought out.

The city has done a fantastic job of setting up basic infrastructure to attract professional companies to the area. However, the city seems to be missing what we’re all asking for currently and just spending excessive amounts of money to try to force what they want.

To date the city has purchased a new building for about $2 million and then spent over $200,000 just trying to figure out what to do with that building and options for a new library. After all that spending they still won’t list a cost for this entire library project because they’re not confident that it won’t go up. They’re also not sure how they’re going to pay for it. You can hear them discuss this for yourself during the Aug. 4 meeting that is available on the Liberty Lake webpage.

I can’t imagine what would happen if I went and tried to purchase a car and the dealer said they weren’t sure how much the car would cost and then I said I’m not sure how I’ll pay for it but we should move forward anyway. It seems very irresponsible to spend millions of dollars and still have no idea how much things are going to cost or how to pay for them.

The current library is functioning as needed for us and if they need a bigger space they already have one that they can use for that. Even with our population increase the number of library visitors isn’t scaling up in a dramatic fashion. According to library staff, many of those visitors are there for meetings and that was part of the reason meeting rooms were added at the new Trailhead building. So that will help alleviate some of the existing visitor load that they are concerned about.

For years I’ve seen most of us asking for a community pool and talking about how important that is to us, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears. So much so that in the city’s plans for a library with a community center they didn’t even consider an option for a pool. The city of Cheney just built an entire aquatics center with slides and pools for $14 million. That will not only provide entertainment but entrance fees help offset costs. Our city wants over $25 million, beyond the $2.2 million they have already spent, just to move groups between buildings and make a bigger library without the things that we are asking for. Their current plan is to hope that they get enough donations to pay for all of this, but if they don’t, then increasing our taxes is an option that they will use.

I think that we should band together as a community and vote “no” on this advisory vote to let the community leaders know where we stand. It’s time that we are heard and we could really use a tax break instead of this constant spending and tax increases on things we aren’t asking for and don’t currently need.

Nathan Wehrman, of Liberty Lake, is a senior network systems engineer.