Library to explore other options for Merritton branch
St. Catharines Public Library presents zero-increase budget to council but Hartzel Road lease expiring
St. Catharines Public Library has been asked to consider other potential sites for its Merritton library branch before it renews its lease in a strip mall on Hartzel Road.
Mayor Walter Sendzik asked library officials during budget deliberations Monday night if they would consider exploring the unused second floor space in St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre for the Merritt branch.
“Is there an opportunity there to finally create a much more community-centric hub rather than a standalone structure?” Sendzik asked, after hearing the library’s lease for the Merritt branch is up April 1 and rent is expected to increase.
Sendzik pointed to St. Catharines Kiwanis Aquatics Centre and the Dr. Huq Family Library branch on Carlton Street as an outstanding example of bringing together many city amenities under one roof rather than keeping them isolated.
Library officials were receptive to the idea, with business administrator Karen Smith Curtis saying she’d be
happy to work with anyone at the city on it.
“I certainly 100 per cent agree, and it’s been my experience from the Burlington public library, that libraries within a larger community space is a wonderful idea and certainly the way libraries are going these days.”
Chief executive officer Ken Su, who formerly worked at Welland Public Library, said the library there opened a branch in a school with District School Board of Niagara and also set up a library in Seaway Mall.
“Definitely a multi-purpose building for a library in partnership with some other organizations is a way to go.”
The library asked for a zero per cent increase from the city for 2021, which amounts to the same $5.67 million it received in 2020.
“The library has been very efficient with use of our money over the last five years,” Smith Curtis said.
“We’ve had about a half a per cent budget increase on average over the last five years, with about a 2.4 per cent increase in our expenses and we’ve been able to manage through that,” she added.
The city’s contribution makes up almost 90 per cent of the library’s budget, with about 3.6 per cent from the province and the rest through miscellaneous revenue like fines and lost book fees, which are down in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Council voted to include the library’s budget as presented in the city’s draft 2021 operating budget and to ask that St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre, The Pen Centre and other sites be explored as a potential future site for the Merritton library branch.