SLO County town hasn’t had a library for 40 years. Here’s how you can help

As a teenager in 1999, Josh Gibson needed to come up with an idea for an Eagle Scout project.

He looked around his hometown and noticed a critical gap: Templeton had no library.

“The starting point for me being inspired was realizing that libraries really meant knowledge being available to everyone,” said Gibson, who is now a deputy state fire marshal supervisor with Cal Fire. “It didn’t seem like it was impossible, so I pursued it.”

He started a nonprofit organization, Friends of the Templeton Library, and raised about $5,000 for the project.

The group, later known as the Templeton Community Library Association, received its nonprofit status in 2000 and secured a lease from the Templeton Unified School District for space on the Templeton High School campus for 60 years — paying just $1 per year. That lease was renewed in March, association president Melinda Reed said.

Despite that promising start, it took more than 20 years for Gibson’s dream to see reality.

On Nov. 9, Gibson, Reed and other supporters finally broke ground on what will become the Templeton library.

“I don’t think anybody realized what it took,” Reed said.

History of Templeton library

The San Luis Obispo County public library system has 14 branches, but Templeton’s library will not be one of them. Instead, it will be a privately funded library that is staffed by volunteers and funded by donations, not taxpayer dollars, Reed said.

But that wasn’t always the case.

Templeton once had a public library that was run by the county for almost 60 years.

In 1915, the Templeton Charitable Women’s Club wanted a reading room and collected donated materials valued at $378 to open it, Reed said. That library was incorporated into the county system in 1920.

In 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13, which slashed property taxes statewide — cutting off an important funding stream for public libraries throughout the state, Reed said.

The Templeton library closed in 1979, with four other libraries in local communities, Reed said.

The other county libraries shuttered by Proposition 13-related cuts have since reopened, but Templeton’s did not, she said.

From the 1970s through 2014, when it ceased operations, Templeton residents turned instead to the Bookmobile, which functioned as a library on wheels, Reed said, delivering books to residents.

The Bookmobile was beloved by Templeton residents, who borrowed more books than any other community in the county served by the mobile service, Reed said.

Today, Templeton residents must rely on the Atascadero Public Library, which is part of the county system, or the Paso Robles City Library, which is run independently by the city, for books, DVDs and other materials, as well as programs such as story time for young children.

Residents can also visit the Book Room in Templeton, which is open for a few hours a day, six days a week, and staffed by volunteers, according to the Templeton Community Library Association website.

Property taxes help fund SLO County library services

Although Templeton’s public library closed in 1979, property taxes paid by Templeton residents are still going to fund San Luis Obispo County library services, Reed said.

San Luis Obispo County Supervisor John Peschong lives in Templeton and represents the North County community as part of District 1.

Peschong said voters care a lot about the lack of a library in Templeton because their taxes pay for library services.

In 2017, approximately $418,000 in taxes paid by Templeton property owners went to fund library services, Reed said.

“And we don’t have a library,” Reed said. “Their thought was that Atascadero was close enough, but kids can’t ride their bikes there.”

Chris Barnickle, director at San Luis Obispo County Public Libraries, said he was unable to verify the amount of property taxes paid by Templeton residents toward library services.

Because Templeton property taxes help fund county library services, he said, if a library were to open in Templeton, the county could chip in to help run it.

“That’s why we said if a library was built in Templeton, we could likely afford to run it,” he said.

Money from property taxes is specifically to be used for library operations, he noted, not for capital costs to build a library.

“I don’t have millions of dollars sitting around to where I can say we’re going to build a new branch in the community,” Barnickle said.

The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors require that the capital costs for building a library have to be split 50/50 — with half coming from the county and the other half coming from other sources, Barnickle said.

The library is the only department in the county that has the 50/50 split rule for funding capital costs, Barnickle wrote in a 2019 letter to the Board of Supervisors.

The 50/50 split rule is part of the reason why, despite the momentum generated by Gibson’s campaign for the library in the early 2000s, it’s been so challenging to find funding to build Templeton’s library, Reed said.

“Not everybody can raise that kind of money,” she said.

Although there are plenty of grants for library programs, Reed said, there are very few grants available to help cover the capital costs of building a library.

“People are skeptical that you are actually going to be able to build a building,” she said.

Why building the Templeton library was so challenging

According to Reed, the Templeton Community Library Association originally planed to build a library designed by local architect Robert McCormick. He created a beautiful, open barn-like space with elaborate details, but it came with a steep price-tag — roughly $5.1 million, Reed said.

For more than 20 years, the Templeton Community Library Association tried to raise the roughly $2.5 million they needed to contribute in capital costs to build the library in partnership with the county, Reed said.

As the cost of construction increased over the years, Peschong said, it became clear that neither the Templeton Community Library Association nor the San Luis Obispo County Department of Public Libraries could afford to build the library as it was originally designed.

In 2008, George Hearst Jr., the great-grandson of publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst, gifted $100,000 in seed money to try and jump-start the process, Reed said.

For years, the Templeton Community Library Association worked to raise money to build the library, but it wasn’t until recently that they received enough to start thinking about building.

“It’s a very active board here in Templeton. They’re hard workers,” said Peschong, who has contributed to the library association. “They have a fundraising thermometer on the building showing how much money they raised. It was probably up for 15 years and it didn’t move until recently, they removed it and put up a sign about the library coming.”

In late 2018, Templeton native Margaret Anderson Radunich died and left $900,612 to the Templeton Community Library Association to fund the library project in her will, Reed said.

She had been a donor to the association since 2001, and her gifts totaled to more than $1 million, Reed said.

Then, in October 2019, Barnickle came to the Board of Supervisors with a proposal to add a bond measure to the November 2020 ballot that would help fund improvements to existing libraries in the county system, as well as build the library in Templeton.

If approved by supervisors and voters, the bond measure would have raised up to $25 million for local libraries, according to a letter written by Barnickle to the supervisors.

But the board shifted priorities after the start of the local COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and opted not to put the bond measure on the ballot, Reed and Barnickle said.

“I was supportive of that bond measure because there are so many public libraries, even my disadvantaged communities like Shandon have a library and I always wondered why Templeton doesn’t,” Peschong said.

Still, he said, he doesn’t anticipate a bond measure for libraries will be introduced anytime soon because of the coronavirus pandemic and inflation.

North County library breaks ground

The pandemic caused the board of the Templeton Community Library Association to change gears too, Reed said.

The association’s board met via Zoom and decided they’d waited long enough to kick off library construction, she said.

Rather than wait to secure matching county funds, the library association is using the funds it has on hand build the library at 1200 South Main St. in Templeton.

That location is perfect for a library because it’s within walking or biking distance of four of the five schools in Templeton, Reed said.

According to Reed, the association is working with Enviroplex, a Stockton-based company, to design a modular building resembling a farmhouse comprised of nine pieces that “snap together like Legos” and will be delivered by flatbed truck and placed on the building’s foundation, Reed said.

The structure will be about 2,800 square feet and cost about $1.34 million, Reed said.

She said everything inside the library — from the furnishings to the books — will be donated.

“I have some woman that are just going to be make it look like magic,” Reed said. “Basically, we wanted to put a building up (for) 20 years. We wanted to put a building on that corner.”

When Reed and others gathered Nov. 9 to break ground on construction, “I went around visiting Main Street shook the hands of business owners,” Reed said. “They were overwhelmed and surprised and happy that we were finally breaking ground on this library. It was very rewarding to me personally to shake their hands and say we’re doing it.”

The modular building pieces likely won’t be delivered until January 2022, instead of the original target date of December, due to the unexpected death of the state inspector who works at the Enviroplex plant, Reed said.

Reed hopes to have the library up and running by February 2022, but the library association is still actively fundraising to help finish construction on the Templeton library.

It will cost roughly $20,000 to pave the gravel near the parking area and driveway, plus more to finish building the portico and get started on the Memory Garden out back, where people can have plant trees or bricks to honor loved ones who have died, Reed said.

The association raised about $300,000 to cover things such as maintenance, utilities and insurance for the library for about five years, Reed said. The library will be staffed entirely by volunteers, Reed said.

“The door is open to the county for what they can do, and I don’t know what their situation is financially for what they’re going to be able to do,” Reed said.

Barnickle said he has not had any discussions about incorporating the library into the county system.

Gibson said that he hopes to some day take his sons, 4-year-old Grant and 3-year-old Colton, and his yet-to-be-born daughter, Emma-Grace, to the Templeton library he helped inspire.

“I’m very glad that it’s moving forward,” Gibson said.

Donations can be sent to the Templeton Community Library Association online at templetonlibrary.org or by mail at PO Box 292, Templeton, CA 93465.

For more information, call 650-796-6295 or email templetoncommunitylibrary@gmail.com.

This story was originally published November 24, 2021 at 10:00 AM.

Sara Kassabian

The Tribune

805-781-7849

Sara Kassabian is a former journalist for The Tribune.