Free Parking Not Part Of New Library Plan

Many Rockville Residents Oppose Fees

The new regional Montgomery County library, a flagship building in Rockville's downtown revitalization project, will offer three times more space and thousands more books, CDs and other items than the library that is being replaced does.

Free parking, however, is not part of the plan for the new $26.3 million library, scheduled to open later this year, as part of the $352 million development known as Rockville Town Center.

The new library will be 71,500 square feet, the county's largest, almost three times the size of the current library. It will have 200,000 items in circulation, compared with the old library's 140,000. There will be more computers, programs and meeting rooms, expanded collections for children, teenagers and people with hearing and vision impairments and other special needs.

"Our position is, we would like to have free parking," said Pam Adams, a member of the Library Advisory Committee, a volunteer organization that monitors library policies. "We are interested in being able to have some sort of [parking] validation through the library or through the city or the county for it to be able to be free."

A petition drive conducted this month gathered about 800 signatures from supporters of free library parking. The drive capped a year of efforts to keep the issue on the agendas of city and county officials.

But supporters of free parking have found that the issue is hard to separate from the complicated, multi-jurisdictional pool of funds that is financing the downtown development. Financial backing is coming from the public and private sectors, and different backers are paying for separate parts of the project.

For example, Montgomery County is paying for the library, a $26.3 million facility. Rockville has issued $36.4 million in bonds to pay for three parking garages. The bonds are to be paid off over 30 years with revenue from the garages and new on-street parking -- a combined total of 1,000 spaces, said Gavin Cohen, the city's finance director.

The library and garages are part of the first phase of the town center project, a 12.5-acre portion known as Rockville Town Square. Its cost of $137 million is a patchwork of $49.6 million from the city and $87 million from a combination of federal, state and county governments, along with Rockville developer Federal Realty Investment Trust. Almost all of the city's contribution -- $45.6 million -- is coming from bond sales, Cohen said.

"The city's position is that the city has gone into debt to pay for these garages, and predicated that on a revenue stream coming from paying to park in these garages," said Rockville City Manager Scott Ullery.

Proposed rate schedules for the garages have not been set.

Free-parking advocates also found that there was a lack of agreement between the two major library volunteer organizations.

Gayl Selkin-Gutman, president of Friends of the Library, a nonprofit organization involved with fundraising for county libraries, said the new library is supposed to be "urban," surrounded by shops, not a parking lot.

"Everyone wants to come out in favor of free parking, but there is no such thing," Selkin-Gutman said. "People are constructing garages -- clearly someone must pay for it. Bonds were taken out by the city. They can't just suddenly guarantee free parking to everybody all of the time."

Parking at all of the county's 22 branch libraries except Bethesda is free. Parking at the Bethesda branch is 50 cents an hour from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, and is otherwise free. Parking at the old Rockville library is free, but space is limited to a lot behind the building with about 38 spaces, including two reserved for handicapped drivers. Regular patrons say that the lot is almost always full or nearly so, and that getting a space requires waiting for someone to pull out of a spot.

When free-parking supporters approached Friends of the Library, Selkin-Gutman said her group "urged the people who felt most strongly to circulate their petitions."

Last week, the petitions made it to the office of County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, who released a statement in support of "the fight to keep parking at the new Rockville library free."

Rockville Mayor Larry Giammo responded in an e-mail to the city manager that Duncan was attempting to politicize the issue and did not wait for city and county staff members to work out a proposal.

The parking issue is tentatively scheduled to be discussed at the Rockville City Council's meeting on March 13. Cohen said he plans to address parking fees in the new garages and the creation of a parking validation system.