North Ogden Library agreement reached between county and city officials
EDA Architect Tom Brennan shared designs for the North Ogden Library renovation during a March 2015 Weber County Library Board meeting.
(LEAD) Mayor of Harrisville Bruce Richins shows potential plans of adding parking to the North Ogden Library after the Weber County Library board meeting at the Weber County Library Southwest Branch in Roy on Tuesday, April 5, 2016. Mayor Richins plan includes shortening the current lawn, adding parking on 475E and potentially moving the skatepark over.
NORTH OGDEN — Adequate parking posed the major road block halting progress on the long-planned renovation of the North Ogden Branch of the Weber County Library. But now that hurdle appears to have been overcome.
North Ogden Mayor Brent Taylor said Monday that months of negotiations between Weber County Commissioner James Ebert and elected officials in North Ogden, Harrisville and Pleasant View yielded an agreement that will solve the parking shortage. Members of the North Ogden City Council narrowly approved the document in a 3-2 vote last Tuesday, June 21.
The basics of that agreement were discussed in a private April 13 session between north-end city officials and Ebert, with Weber County Administrative Services Director Brad Dee acting as facilitator.
“We worked it out then and have spent a couple of months finalizing the details. We’ve finally come to an agreement that we feel good about,” Taylor said.
In early March, Weber County commissioners halted work on the $5 million North Ogden project due to sharp dissension on how it should move forward. The long overdue branch expansion was one of four projects detailed in the library system’s countywide, $45 million capital plan that voters approved in a special 2013 bond election. But elected officials in Weber’s three northern cities cried foul that their concerns had been ignored and pushed for significant changes that would have increased project costs and required fundraising to cover the gap.
Under the new agreement, North Ogden City will donate its skate park property directly south of the Library to Weber County to construct a 30-stall parking lot. In return, Weber County will contribute $213,000 to help relocate the skate park about one-half block east to land currently occupied by a community garden.
The new skate park site is adjacent to the North Ogden City Hall, Taylor said, and will remain under the watchful eye of the city’s police department, which some parents had hoped would be the case.
“North Ogden City is also committing to expand the nearby senior center parking lot by approximately 70 stalls, and then to give the library a shared easement for use of those stalls,” Taylor said.
In addition, Weber County intends to create approximately 40 angled parking stalls along 475 East, the street directly west of the library, as part of phase two of the Library’s capital improvement plan. But discussions are still under way to possibly make that happen sooner, Taylor said.
The agreement also stipulates that construction of parking stalls south of the library should begin by Sept. 1, and any extra costs caused by delays must be borne by North Ogden City. The city has also agreed to waive or pay all city building inspections, city-imposed impact fees and building plan check fees for the library construction project.
North Ogden City has future plans to widen 2600 North, and this agreement would require the county to relinquish up to 11 feet of North Ogden Library frontage when that time comes.
“This was truly a compromise where neither side got everything they wanted,” Taylor said. “We came together to see how we could do something fair for everyone that would get the project moving.”
Taylor credited Ebert for doggedly pursuing both sides of the issue.
“We’ve talked about many of these decisions for several months,” Ebert said, noting that the parking accommodations ping-ponged back and forth between north-end officials and Weber County Library Board members. But time and money ultimately drove the need to arrive at a resolution.
“At the end of day, the longer we wait the more we have to pay in construction costs,” Ebert said, adding that by moving forward now, the project can still be completed within the allocated bond budget. “We think we have the present and future parking needs addressed. I’m very appreciative of the North Ogden City Council and even those members who voted against it, because we had a very open and good dialogue. And that’s how we make the best decisions.”
Reached Monday, Weber County Library Director Lynnda Wangsgard said “it’s fantastic they’ve come to terms.”
Wangsgard said that she and the Library Board had been involved in the decisions to some degree as the agreement bounced several times between the city and county.
“I received a copy of the revised agreement last Friday from the County Attorney and shared it with Scott Spencer, our library board chairman, and then forwarded it back to the County Attorney,” Wangsgard said.
The next step will be for Weber County commissioners to approve the agreement in a public meeting, possibly during their July 5 session.
The Library’s capital plan timeline will need to adjust accordingly. Wangsgard said the North Branch was initially intended to be the third project, but now the Main Branch has jumped ahead and its construction bids are expected to arrive Friday. She now expects the North Ogden project to be ready to go out for bid in late 2016 or early 2017,
“It would be running about a year behind schedule at that point,” Wangsgard said, noting that its expansion and renovation was previously scheduled to finish up and reopen by Jan. 15, 2017.
Contact reporter Cathy McKitrick at 801-625-4214 or cmckitrick@standard.net. Follow her on Twitter at @catmck.
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