The Santa Barbara Public Library Foundation supports charter amendment — Measure A2024 — featured on the March 5 ballot.
In partnership with the Santa Barbara Public Library and the City, the Foundation has been working to revitalize the Library Plaza since 2012. After many years of working through the City Hall approval process and completing a successful 18-month $5 million Capital Campaign, we were thrilled to break ground on the Michael Towbes Library Plaza in July 2022.
Our hope was to open the plaza in the fall of 2023, but unfortunately the library is still in the midst of construction, due to numerous avoidable construction problems and delays. As has often been the case in Santa Barbara, the lowest bidder selected to be the contractor for the plaza project was not local — from Los Angeles — and had little experience with the type of construction issues normally facing projects in Santa Barbara. Compounding the problem was a lack of project oversight because of management’s distance from the project. The end result was that the project will end up being significantly behind schedule and vastly over budget because of the number of construction defects that needed to be corrected.