Hemet Rejects $7.2-Million Library Grant : Finances: Council decides it can’t spare $3.8 million in matching funds or pay to run new facility. Many in city bemoan loss of gift.

You know times are tough when a city aches for a new, larger library, but can’t afford to accept a $7.2-million state grant to help pay for one.

On Tuesday, a divided City Council voted to return the state funds, saying Hemet couldn’t meet its end of the bargain by coming up with some money of its own.

The decision followed a passionate five-hour council meeting where the merits of the enlarged library as a foundation of civic pride and scholarship were weighed against arguably more pressing municipal needs, including improved police and fire protection.

In some corners, the debate was cast as one pitting books against bullets, the library against law enforcement.

“How can you expect to hire more librarians when you can’t hire enough policemen?” asked the wife of a police sergeant in urging the city to reject the state funds. “When he puts on his uniform and badge, we hope he’ll come home safe that night. Librarians don’t have to do (worry about) that.”

The City Council voted 3 to 2 to reject the state grant, saying the city could not kick in the required $3.8 million in matching funds, nor could it afford to run the larger library once it was constructed.

Hemet thus became the first city in California to have competed and won library money from a $75-million library bond issue approved by voters in 1988, only to return the gift.

State officials said they would have no problem finding another city willing to take the money.

“Hemet did an excellent job of demonstrating its need for the library. It was very fierce competition,” said Cy Silver, a consultant with the California State Library. “We hope, for the sake of library services in that area, that the city could find its way to fund it. But if it can’t, there are others who are happy to have the money.”

Troubling the council majority was that the city would have to spend precious redevelopment dollars--traditionally earmarked for downtown renovation projects--for its share of the library costs, then shoulder the burden of annual operating and maintenance expenses.

City officials estimated that once the 52,000-square-foot library--five times larger than the existing 20-year-old library--was constructed, it would cost $120,000 or more a year to maintain.

“Our general fund has been going to hell fast,” said Councilman Harold Almanrode in opposing the library project. “We don’t have the money for a new library.”

Added Councilwoman Marge Tandy, “No way can I put the city further into debt.”

Others, though, bemoaned the loss of the gift, calling it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a library designed to meet the growth of this community of 50,000 people.

Said Mayor Ken Wolford, “I had high hopes we could aim high and make it. I’m sorry to be a part of a city that doesn’t. Hemet will go forward, but I’m very sorry we have a City Council that isn’t looking that way.”

The council’s decision Tuesday was a reversal of a vote two months ago to accept the state funds. That vote followed a citywide ballot measure in which 55% of the voters said they would support a bond issue to pay for the city’s library costs. Even though it didn’t win a two-thirds majority, the election results were considered a barometer of communitywide support for the library.

Since then, some council members had second thoughts.

Tuesday’s special City Council meeting was called to resolve the question once and for all. It attracted a standing-room crowd of more than 150 people to City Hall, including more than 50 who addressed the council. Most rallied for the library.

The chairman of the city’s economic development commission talked of how libraries add to the quality of life that attracts new business. The president of the Chamber of Commerce talked of how Hemet is no longer a “backwash community” and needs to demonstrate its progressive values. A former Scoutmaster talked of getting kids off the street, and a physics teacher at the local community college told of how he taught himself at the public library.

But the debate over the library pitted its benefits against those of improved law enforcement and fire protection.

One speaker said he had spent three decades in law enforcement “and schools and libraries can do more to maintain our civility than law enforcement.” Minutes later another man said he, too, had spent 30 years as a police officer and countered, “I have never yet seen a library cut crime. People are not leaving Los Angeles because there aren’t enough libraries.”

Even the president of the Hemet Police Employees Assn., in a letter in the Hemet News, suggested that his officers shouldn’t suffer at the expense of a new library. “Does a library make a community proud?” asked Duane Wisehart. “I would personally be prouder of the ability to walk the streets of Hemet without the fear of gangs, thefts and drug users victimizing me or my family.”

Anne B. Jenkins, a member of the city’s library governing board, said after the meeting that efforts would begin to at least expand the existing library.

“Sooner or later Hemet will get a new library. It just won’t be an $11-million one paid two-thirds by the state,” she said.