The Kanawha County Public Library system and the leader of one of its board committees have denied an open records request for documents regarding the search for a new main library location and documents regarding the analysis of possibly instead renovating the current main building.
The Gazette-Mail's June 30 state Freedom of Information Act request for documents, and the denial of that request, came after the library system's full board approved last month paying up to $370,000 for what Cheryl Crigger Morgan said will be a closer look at the still-unnamed site she expects will be recommended as the new main library site.
Morgan, former president of the board, is still a board member and is chairwoman of the Ad Hoc Building Projects Committee, which has been working on picking a site to recommend to the full board.
She said last month that the committee is still circling two sites, both in Charleston city limits, each in a building that would be renovated. She declined to say then whether the current main library site, in downtown Charleston at the corner of Capitol and Quarrier streets, is one the two finalists, and said she only plans to publicly reveal the final recommended site.
"Why would you reveal something that you didn't want to choose, right?" Morgan said last month. "I mean, that doesn't make any sense."
When asked whether the owners of the site the committee is now looking closer at know about this extra level of analysis, Morgan said she believes so. A reporter then asked why she wasn't revealing the name of the site.
"You see, in the public, that people are going to choose favorites," Morgan replied. "And then if their favorite doesn't win, then it's gonna ... it has to be not only which site would best serve the community, but which site makes the most sense financially and programmatically, and those are decisions that need to be made from within because our experts, HBM, 95 percent of their business is building libraries all over the country. This is what they do, this is what they know."
Several other system board members contacted this week also declined to provide the names of the final sites.
The newspaper's written records request was for, among other things, "all documents showing the properties, buildings and sites that have been considered and will be considered for possible purchase, rent or other acquisition, including vacant lots, occupied lots and current buildings that could be renovated to become the new main library branch."
"These documents should also include, but not be limited to, all documents showing any rankings of the sites," the newspaper went on to specify.
The Gazette-Mail addressed the request to Morgan and Alan Engelbert, director of the library system.
They declined to provide any of the requested documents. Mike Kelly, a lawyer representing the library system, did provide minutes for meetings of the full library board that reference the separate meetings of the Ad Hoc Building Projects Committee, but he said requested meeting agendas and minutes for that committee don't exist.
In his written denial of the Gazette-Mail's request, Kelly cited the Freedom of Information Act's exemption for "Internal memoranda or letters received or prepared by any public body," and cited a court case in arguing that "for an exemption to be valid, 'the documents must be both predecisional and deliberative.'"
"The Ad Hoc Building Projects Committee is still in the predecisional stage," Kelly wrote in the denial. "The Committee has made no recommendations to the KCPL Board of Directors as to a new building site and has made no recommendations that the current site be renovated as an alternative to a new site. Rather, the Committee has continued to carefully sift through its options and weigh the pros and cons as it gathers information and considers the analysis and opinions of its consultants and experts."
In February of last year, the board approved paying Charleston-based Silling Associates and Cleveland-based HBM Architects and those companies' subcontractors no more than $110,000 in total hourly fees for their work on Phase One, which was to involve gathering community input, helping the board envision what exactly it wants in a main library and helping it choose a location.
The firms also were eligible for reimbursement for certain additional expenses. Silling's Jody Driggs said at the time that the cost and time frame for Phase Two, which will deal with the detailed design of the site that's ultimately selected, was yet to be determined.
The library board approved a contract amendment document last month that says additional services will be provided at the hourly rates set in the February 2016 contract, but the total amount can't exceed $370,000.
The contract amendment document states that "If the professional services move through to full design and construction administration for the Project, fees collected for Additional Services for this Amendment will be reconciled with the Basic Services of Phase Two, provided the information developed remains applicable to the final direction of the Library development in Phase Two."
The February 2016 contract laid out a 4- to 6-month process to prepare the board to ultimately choose either to overhaul its existing main library location or pick a specific new site. It's now been more than a year since that contract was approved.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.