KDSN RADIO News
Public library in northern Iowa may move to university space
It appears the Forest City Public Library may move into a new home about half a mile away on the Waldorf University campus.
Forest City officials hired a fundraising company six years ago, and the original plan was to move the public library’s collections into a vacant grocery store next door. The estimate of necessary repairs to the store topped a million dollars, though, and fundraising fell dramatically short. The city council in Forest City, the library board, and Waldorf University are in the process of approving an agreement to have the Forest City Public Library occupy the first floor of the Waldorf University Library.
Eileen Hovinga, who attended a recent city council meeting in Forest City, said she’s concerned and shocked. “I attended library board meetings following this very closely, and then I stopped watching for this issue because when I left those discussion,s I was under the understanding from the Waldorf Library director and from the conversations in that meeting that nothing was happening,” Hovinga said.
Forest City City Councilman Tony Mikes said negotiations got “bogged down” over issues unrelated to the library’s future and the discussions did “go quiet for quite a while,” but there’s now a proposal the city council has made public for citizens to review. “It does take a while to develop this,” Mikes said. “We’ve had plenty of things that have happened in between that have caused some delays.”
Mikes indicated a significant portion of the money raised to move the city’s library into the vacant grocery store has been returned to donors. It appears staff from the university’s library would be able to work in both libraries, so the Forest City Public Library could be open for longer hours. Forest City has had a public library since 1898. Waldorf has had a library since 1903. The current Waldorf Library building opened in 2005.
(Reporting by A.J. Taylor, KIOW, Forest City)
