4S Ranch Library Expansion Project

On October 2015, Pomerado News ran an article about how a land lease was halting the 4S Ranch Library expansion, I am sad to report that it is still the case.

http://www.sandiegouniontribun...

After the article came out, we started a change.org petition asking the 4S Ranch HOA to lease at a reasonable price to the County, 215 people signed the petition in a few days.

https://www.change.org/p/4s-ra...

The 4S Master Association Board had its meeting soon after that and Board Members of the Friends of the 4S Ranch Library attended to ask the HOA Board in person to support the library expansion, we were told to let them do their job, the Board said the HOA supported the project and they will move things forward with the County and that we were not helping by getting attention in the media. A County representative also attended this meeting from Acquisition Services.
We honored the HOA Board's request and we stopped spreading the petition or any other communication with the media to regards to that matter.

Since then Mary Karscig (Board President for the Friends of the 4S Ranch Library) & Michael Farrell (Board Vice President) have been trying to get updates from both sides of the negotiations. Mary by following up with the County and Michael by following up with the 4S HOA.
The San Diego County Library had also his Director (Jose Aponte) retiring on 2016 so we were left with an approved 7 million dollars for the expansion but no one really moving things forward from the County side. Mary has been asking the new Director (Migell Acosta) to move the project forward but even when they agree with her on the spot, the responses and actions do not follow.

Last update Michael got from the HOA was that in order to lease the property they need to send a ballot to the homeowners for approval and because most probably they will not get quorum then take it to the Court to get the approval to move forward.
Our 4S Ranch HOA is not willing to pay the total cost for the procedures and wants to share the cost with the County, the County cannot pay for that.

We are talking about a small library that has a circulation of 50,000 a month, it runs 80 different programs and it has attendance of at least 3,000 per month. A library that mainly serves the 4S Ranch area but other neighbor communities too and we are still growing.
Last week we had 300 people attending a Diwali Program, our community room only has capacity for about 50 people.
We are in serious need of an expansion and the Friends of the 4S Ranch Library are very frustrated that the County and the 4S Ranch HOA are not moving things forward.

Kind regards,

Abigail Velazquez
Publicity Chair
Friends of the 4S Ranch Library