To Sign or Not to Sign
- Livable El Cerrito
- Oct 22
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 23
Supporters and opponents of a library tax initiative are speaking out around El Cerrito, each trying to persuade voters to sign or not to sign their petitions.
The pro-initiative campaign is trying to gather the last 600 signatures needed to qualify the measure for the ballot in 2026.
Opponents are asking voters not to sign initiative petitions. They are inviting people to sign a no-on-the-library-tax petition on their website.
Construction Cost ‘Guesstimate’ Now $28 Million
Meanwhile, the “guesstimate” of the likely construction cost has been increased to $28 million by Greg Lyman, treasurer of the Committee for a Plaza Station Library and the initiative’s author. Lyman said the increase is mainly due to escalating construction costs.
Lyman said getting started on a library is important because those costs will only increase. If the plan known to the city and favored by BART and the developer is implemented, Lyman said construction could start as early as 2027.
Relationship to BART Development
Lyman also said he’s concerned that the developer of the Plaza BART transit-oriented development may rule out building a library into the planned affordable housing building at Fairmount Avenue and Liberty Street.
Opponents said at a meeting on Oct. 21 at St. John’s Community Center that the proposed Plaza station library will benefit the BART development more than it will serve city residents.
“I think it’s more about the city trying to prop up the BART project,” said Wally Nowinski. “There’s a library on Stockton Street and the county continues to operate it. It may not be as nice as we’d like or as big as we’d like, but it works. There is time to have a better plan that actually makes sense.”
Halloween Goal, Dec. 15 Deadline
The pro-initiative Committee for a Plaza station library needed about 600 more signatures as of Oct. 10, according to Lyman, a former El Cerrito City Council member and mayor. They will try to finish by Halloween, but they have until Dec. 15, 2025 to submit signatures, according to a letter from City Clerk Holly Charlety.
The goal is to collect 2,200 signatures to end up with 1,800 valid signatures of registered voters. Lyman has been out almost every day in September and October at locations around town, including Madera Elementary School, El Cerrito Natural Grocery, and Giovanni’s Market. Also staffing the table have been Charles Taylor and Steven Price. Lyman said about 50 other volunteers have helped.
If the initiative ends up on an El Cerrito ballot, it will be the first citizens’ initiative in recent history to do so.
Initiative Opponents Take Action
At the same time, El Cerrito residents who oppose the library tax initiative are trying to persuade voters not to sign initiative petitions.
Two opponents, Nowinski and Barbara Chan, made in-person presentations on Oct. 6 at Christ Lutheran Church and Oct. 21 at St. John’s, two venues that provide venues where senior citizens meet and socialize.
Chan said she has lived in El Cerrito since 1987 and has volunteered at the El Cerrito library, helped plant the first trees on the Ohlone Greenway, and organized a successful campaign to ban plastic utensils in restaurants in El Cerrito.
Nowinski said he and his wife moved to El Cerrito in 2023, bought a home, and hope to raise a family here. He is head of consumer marketing at Impulse Labs in San Francisco, which makes a battery-integrated electric stove.
Chan said she met Nowinski through Nextdoor, where a lot of concern is being expressed about the library tax proposal. They started talking with one another and decided to speak out to others.
“We ask you not to sign the petition,” Nowinski said. “We have six or seven key concerns."
The opposition website says, “El Cerrito deserves a great library – but the city initiative is the wrong plan at the wrong price. It locks us into paying $75 million or more in taxes for a ground-floor commercial space that we won’t even own in the (El Cerrito Plaza) BART project.”
What’s the Tax?
The initiative would authorize a special tax of up to 17 cents per square foot of improved building area per year. That amounts to $340 per year on a 2,000 square foot house or $255 per year on a 1,500 square foot house.
This would apply to all building types and there would be a tax of $100 per year on each vacant parcel.
The property tax would be subject to an annual cost-of-living increase approved by the City Council without a vote of residents.
The tax term is fixed at 30 years from the date that bonds are issued.
The tax can also be used for the first 10 years after library construction to cover the city’s operating costs for the library building, including utilities, maintenance, and extra hours.
Lyman said the intention is to keep the library open 56 hours a week with – at least for the first ten years – the tax paying the cost of extra staff hours beyond the 40 paid for by the county.
Lyman says the tax could be lower than 17 cents per square foot, and that the City Council is prohibited from setting a tax rate higher than 115% of the rate needed.
Not Enough Certainty?
Nowinski said it’s clear the library will be expensive, but it’s not clear how expensive.
Giving the City Council authority to raise the tax annually based on inflation creates uncertainty, Nowinsky said. “If a tax starts out at $300, how much will it be in five years? Or 30 years?
Having the tax cover the city’s operating expenses for only the first 10 years also creates uncertainty, Nowinsky said. Will another tax be needed in ten years?
Lyman has told residents the county is working on a plan that would generate more tax money for libraries. He also said he limited the term for operating costs to keep the maximum tax at 17 cents per square foot.
Chan, however, said city taxpayers would also have to pay any new county tax in addition to the city library tax.
‘A Pig in a Poke’
She said there is no plan, design, or architectural drawings showing the proposed library. There is an artist’s rendering of the building’s exterior but no image of what a ground-floor library inside would look like.
“We’re being asked to tax ourselves without seeing a plan,” she said. “My father would have called that ‘a pig in a poke.’”
Location, Location
Lyman points out that the initiative does not require that a new city library be built at the El Cerrito Plaza location, although Lyman is convinced it is the best location.
However, he says many library supporters have told him they don’t like the location. Lyman would like the city to take a look at the costs and timelines of other proposals “so people would have the information they need to make a decision.”
Building a library in the Plaza BART location has been endorsed by four of five current City Council members and voted into the city’s strategic plan.
Access Inside the BART TOD
Approved plans for the Plaza BART station (described as a transit-oriented development or TOD) call for eliminating all 740 spaces in BART parking lots and building a 145-space garage for BART riders. There will be phased construction of 743 apartments in six buildings with a total of 266 parking spaces for tenants.
There will be no dedicated parking for the library.
City officials have said they will come up with a plan that creates time-limited parking on nearby city streets that library patrons can use.
“Do we want to build a new library in a spot where we know for sure parking is going to be a problem?” Nowinski asked.
Lyman said he’s confident the city will come up with parking strategies that will “promote available parking.”
He added that there is little parking at the current library at 6510 Stockton Ave.
A Question of Size
The planned Plaza BART library would be three times the size of the existing 6,500 square foot library. Lyman has said that library use has recently been increasing and a 20,000 square-foot facility is needed.
Opponents say that in-person library use has declined at libraries throughout the country, including at the El Cerrito library.
“This plan relies on more people going to the library, but library use has gone down in the last decade,” said Kimberly White at the Oct. 6 discussion at United Methodist Church. “Does a city of 25,000 people need a 20,000 square foot library?”
She added that most people no longer go to the library to do research because there is so much access to information online.
In a separate interview, Lyman said that in cities where new libraries are built, library use increases dramatically.
A Developer Handout?
Nowinski said moving the library into one of the Plaza BART developer’s affordable housing buildings is a “developer handout.”
City taxpayers would become the ground-floor tenant of the affordable housing building, and their obligation to pay the library tax would help the developer and city seek the other funding they need to construct the building.
“We front them some of the money they need to pay for construction of one of their buildings,” Nowinski said. “Then we have to rent it back.”
Chan said it would be a great deal for the developer to have one consistent tenant for all 20,000 square feet of ground floor retail space. “They would only need to have one tenant for 99 years,” she said.
Lyman said he doesn’t believe the BART developer wants or needs city tax money to get construction funded.
If there is no library, he said, the developer would add apartments and some parking spaces.
To contact proponents: https://c4psl.org/
To contact opponents: https://sites.google.com/view/no-on-another-forever-tax/home
No design, no plans, just taxes for a vague-sounding library? Aren't we smarter than to provide a blank check of $75 million or more in taxes? Let's wait for a more thought-out plan that results in a better situated building that El Cerrito actually owns--not rents.
Thank you so much for this article! It is so informative, raising many issues that I wasn't aware of. You have truly done your homework!
No. This is ridiculous.