Don’t Believe Misinformation

An excerpt from the city's News and Views

OPINION

By Betty Buginas

Betty Buginas is a former newspaper editor in West Contra Costa County and the publisher of El Cerrito Wire.

Misinformation makes it hard for voters to obtain accurate, unbiased information about the library tax initiative on the June 2 ballot.

A Record of Misinformation

The library is at a “virtual standstill when youth use the library after school.” A Plaza BART library could “save El Cerrito taxpayers approximately $10 million.” “Any tax measure would continue the high standards in El Cerrito for fiscal accountability and transparency.”

This is one of the many incomplete, highly biased communications about the Plaza BART library proposal that was produced with your tax dollars. (City newsletter News and Views, Fall/Winter 2023 https://www.elcerrito.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/7390)

Yet some City Council members seem mystified that a growing number of residents no longer trust city communications.

At the council meeting Feb. 17 council member Lisa Motoyama said, “What’s real is what’s on the website of the city and I think there’s a number of times that folks have said things that are completely not true and we’ve stated that they’re not true but they don’t believe us because we’re the city.”

Frequent library users’ observations don’t match that it is at “a virtual standstill when youth use it after school.”

Flawed Comparisons Favor Plaza Location

Building at the BART station would save $10 million? The Impact Report on the El Cerrito Library Initiatiative presented at the Feb. 19 City Council meeting (https://elcerrito.gov/DocumentCenter/View/22994) shows the only way you see a $10 million gap is if you compare the $37.2 million BART project, which does not include a parking structure, to the most expensive of five scenarios, a standalone library that would include a $4.7 million parking structure. The city’s argument is there would be plenty of parking near BART.

With new structures displacing parking, how is that possible? They are counting parking within a half mile, an area that stretches to Fat Apples, Goodwill, the intersection of Lincoln and San Pablo Avenues, and Central Park.

The estimate for a stand-alone library also includes $2.1 million for site acquisition. The BART station library would be on someone else’s land, something the city treats as unimportant because the city would own the building improvements it makes, comparing it to owning a condo.

Bigger Library Means Higher Operating Costs

The flawed argument that a Plaza BART library would save money also ignores the cost to operate and maintain a larger facility. Three of the five options assume we need a library three times larger than the current one.

Renovating the library at $10.3 million would clearly be cheaper than any other option.

As for “the high standards in El Cerrito for fiscal accountability and transparency”? The “City of El Cerrito: Excessive Spending and Insufficient Efforts to Address Its Perilous Financial Condition Jeopardize the City's Ongoing Fiscal Viability” issued by the California state auditor in March 2021 would beg to differ.

( https://information.auditor.ca.gov/reports/2020-803/introduction.html )

Task Force Too Late To Inform Voters

At the Feb. 17 meeting where Motoyama made her comments, the council expressed interest in creating a library task force. But it didn’t actually get the ball rolling, instead referring the matter back to staff. If anyone was holding out hope the task force would get out accurate information before the election, the council majority put that to rest two days later. On Feb. 19, the council voted 4-1 (William Ktsanes dissenting) to set the election on the tax for June rather than November, at an added cost of about $80,000.

Opponents have done an incredible job gathering material to provide balance to the biased and incomplete information produced with our tax dollars, something that never should have been their responsibility.  It is not fair to hold them to a higher standard than the paid professionals.

Our city has had 10 years since the failed 2016 measure to talk honestly and openly about the range of options. Instead, council members made up their minds first and used city staff as their public relations firm.

That's one of the reasons El Cerrito residents who love libraries dislike this library tax so much.