Mayor Durkan’s Budget Proposal & Green Lake

Earlier this week, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan released her proposed $5.9 billion budget for 2019-2020. While many items in it will affect Green Lake there are two that caught our eye.

The Green Lake Community Center, the oldest community center in the city, and Evans Pool received a line item for $500,000 in 2019 and 2020 for schematic design work.

Another item in the budget includes repairs to the Green Lake Library. According to the budget proposal:

“As the Library’s buildings have all surpassed the ten-year mark since the completion of the capital improvements associated with the 1998 “Library’s for All” bond measure that upgraded The Seattle Public Library’s system with new facilities, technology, and books, they require attention to flooring, casework, finishes and restroom fixtures. Some examples of asset preservation items funded through the Library’s CIP budget include: major repairs and replacement to roofs, building envelopes, HVAC and other critical building systems, doors, windows, flooring and casework. A varying combination of roof, building envelope and window planning and/or restoration is scheduled at Queen Anne, Columbia, West Seattle and Green Lake, contingent upon which projects begin in late 2018. The Library Levy provides funding of approximately $2.7 million in 2019, which is the current levy’s final year.”

We have reached out to Seattle Public Library for information on projects scheduled for this year and what potential improvements could be slated for next year and 2020 that would fall under this proposal. Our hunch is that the proposed work would include the cooling system in the library. (Again, we are confirming that now.) We do know that during the summer months, Green Lake Library has been forced to close several times due to extreme heat in the unairconditioned building.

UPDATE: Seattle Library’s Andra Addison says no, heating is not part of this budget. “The Green Lake Branch project was the reroofing project that started in late 2017 and was completed in the first quarter of 2018. Air conditioning is not part of the upgrade. The cost to incorporate air conditioning in a Carnegie building is extremely high for the number of days we require air conditioning.

The proposed 2019 budget for The Seattle Public Library, (which includes funds from the 2012 Library levy), provides for the current level of services at the Green Lake Branch (such as the existing operating hours) for 2019.”

For more on the proposed budget (all 676+ pages of it!) go here.