Over 100 residents gathered at Rockrimmon Library on Oct. 26 to organize a campaign to prevent the library from closing. During an Oct. 16 meeting, the Pikes Peak Library District (PPLD) Board of Trustees voted 5-2 to not renew Rockrimmon’s lease after Nov. 30, citing a $1.2 million maintenance backlog, Rockrimmon’s proximity to other library locations, and the expense of Rockrimmon’s lease.
“In June 2024, the board received a preliminary Facilities Master Plan report (FMP) and was presented with the final report in late September during the Board’s annual retreat,” wrote Dora Gonzales, president of the PPLD Board of Trustees in an Oct. 17 letter to the public. “Since June, the trustees have been thoroughly reviewing and considering the report’s findings and recommendations and realized they needed to make some hard decisions about how PPLD should proceed.”
Colorado Springs City Councilor Dave Donelson addressed the capacity crowd of concerned citizens. “I met with the [PPLD] CEO and two board members of the library on Aug. 8, and I was told – because some of you were contacting me, and saying, ‘Hey, they’re going to close the libraries,'” said Donelson. “It sounded unlikely. So, I met with them, and I was told, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not going to happen this year, in 2024. We will make the decision in 2025 or 2026.”
Donelson noted that the owner of Rockrimmon Library’s building attempted to address the Board of Trustee’s concerns. “I spoke twice [during the Oct. 16 meeting] saying [PPLD Board of Trustees] should accept the offer by the owner of this facility,” he said. “I said that they should accept that offer for the reduced rate. He was going to cut the lease by $28,000 and the lease would only be for one year, and he would cover any cost of water that came in on the floor like happened during the heavy rains last summer. … My suggestion was to use that year, that one year, and come up with a solid solution for it.”
Donelson was hopeful that a concerted effort could convince the PPLD Board of Trustees to reconsider. “If you’re quiet, if citizens just say nothing, then elected officials kind of go, ‘Okay, well, they must be okay with it,'” he said. “If things like this happen and the media is good enough to cover it and it becomes apparent that the citizens really – maybe the Board of Trustees misunderstood how important this place is. Maybe they should change their plan. I believe that can happen. Until this place is leased out again, and I don’t believe it has been yet by the owner, there’s still an opportunity for that decision to be reversed.”
Karla Powers, one of the organizers of the Oct. 26 meeting, urged residents to contact elected officials. “All we have to do is state the facts and say how we feel as part of this community,” she said. “This is a public library. We’re the public. We can do this without having to do anything mean or horrible. We can just do a respectful job in this whole thing. The thing that’s going to show are lots of people at the meetings so they can see people, lots of emails, lots of communication. So that’s what we’re going to try to do.”
Members of the PPLD Board of Trustees are appointed by members of the Colorado Springs City Council and the El Paso County Board of Commissioners, and PPLD is funded by property taxes, which makes PPLD a sovereign entity outside the control of either City Council or County Commissioners.
“This Board of Trustees is kind of on their own once we appoint citizens to that group,” said Donelson. “Which to me is unusual. I don’t agree with that. I think [decisions] should be appealable to either the County Commissioners or City Council, but it’s not.”
Judy Darcy, another meeting organizer, noted that Rockrimmon isn’t the only branch in the PPLD that could face closure. “Last week we found out they’re about to close Ruth Holley, which is in the poorest neighborhood in the district,” she said. “A whole bunch of kids are going to lose access to the library over there. Then next [location] is rumored to be Cheyenne Mountain, so they’re going to close two more libraries. So, while we want to save this library, there are two other libraries they’re talking about shutting down, and this is unacceptable.”
Lara Matisek, a parent activist in Academy School District 20 (ASD20), raised concerns that the decision to close Rockrimmon is ideologically motivated. “I know a lot of us are shocked and surprised as to how we got here,” she said. “We have a board member on the Board of Trustees, Aaron Salt, who is also the ASD20 school board president, who is also the COO of Woodland Park School District. It’s a conflict of interest. This is not a surprise. The other libraries will close as long as this man stays involved … I’m very intimately familiar with him since 2018. He is against public education. He wants to privatize and voucher system our public education. He wants to close our libraries. My daughter attends Eagle View Middle School, right down the street, and the policy in ASD20 – thanks to Mr. Salt – changed where we have to opt in our children to use their public school libraries in ASD20.”
During an Oct. 29 budget meeting, Donelson attempted to convince the Colorado Springs City Council to approve $200,000 to PPLD to cover Rockrimmon’s lease, but the rest of council voted against his request.
“That is the responsibility of that Board of Trustees to make that decision and not ours to rescue,” said Councilor Nancy Henjum, who along with Lynette Crow-Iverson serve as City Council’s liaisons to PPLD.
Residents were urged by Powers, Darcy, and Donelson to attend the Nov. 12 Colorado Springs City Council meeting and the Nov. 20 PPLD Board of Trustees meeting to express their concerns.
