Council Member Nash, Willits,
Library Director Jessica Dorr, hired by the city to run the city’s libraries and realize the city’s vision, prefers to expand existing facilities, or build a library in SE Boise, where people don’t live yet, rather than provide a library where residents have been living for 30+ years with poor library access (nearly 30,000 residents west of Five Mile Road). Doesn’t Boise deserve a library director who believes in the vision Boise has adopted, A City for Everyone?
To make it appear impossible to build a new library without voter approval (library projects > $25 million require majority voter approval), building costs seem to have been deliberately inflated. The facilities study put the cost of a new library at $32 million. The beautiful Bown Crossing library is the city’s newest library, and it was completed for $8 million in 2017. Using the Mortenson construction cost index, an $8 million project in 2017 would be $13 million today.
Despite all existing library branches being built largely with public tax dollars, when we were permitted a few minutes to present our petition to the Boise Library Board of Trustees in September 2023, the concluding message was: if you can find the funds for a public library, maybe there’s a shot. Otherwise, we don’t see it happening.
The city allocated significant capital funds for rebuilding a new downtown library. After the main library project failed, instead of recognizing that there was a sizable part of the city without a library, where a branch library could be built for a small fraction of the cost of the new downtown library project, the money all went into other projects.
6. The city seems to ignore West Boise in general
You know the hip traffic box art around town? There isn’t a single traffic box adorned with cool public art west of Maple Grove.It’s not uncommon for Boiseans, and even city employees, to not recognize that Boise extends all the way west to Eagle Road – and beyond.
While it’s true that the city is completing the final phase of McDevitt Park in West Boise (hooray!), the park had been in its current unfinished state for 25 years. The project wasn’t prioritized until there were (a) multiple appeals made at city budget hearings and (b) interest was expressed to Parks and Rec about the feasibility of building a city library on 2 vacant acres of this youth sports complex. According to the city almanac, 47% of residents in District 1 (West Boise) live within a 10 minute walk to a park, vs 70% city wide.
1,300+ Citizens from West Boise – and other parts of Boise – signed a petition recognizing the gap in library services, requesting the Mayor, City Council, and Library Staff fill the library services hole in West Boise. Citizens from West Boise had strong participation in the 2024 online survey and the 2025 library listening sessions. There were West Boise residents at all 6 “listening sessions” expressing a desire to have a library branch in West Boise. Even though these listening sessions were the public input aspect of the facilities plan, the sessions explicitly focused on questions besides location and accessibility. Public participation seems to have made little impact on decision makers’ thinking.
8. Library trustees do not represent Boise equally
It’s not even close. I understand there are no library trustees who live west of 36th Street. At times they’ve expressed awareness of the request of West Boise citizens for a library, but by and large they’ve simply gone along with Director Dorr’s direction.In the January 2026 library trustees meeting, Trustee Nikki Panterra asked about library coverage in comparable cities. This was cited again later in the meeting. In the next meeting, on February 11th, Director Dorr stated that there’s no “industry” standard for library access. There was not a single word of discussion on the topic.
On the morning of Feb 6th, 5 days prior to the trustees meeting, I emailed the library trustees and Director Dorr a detailed analysis on the subject (see attached). I first did this analysis on comparable cities in 2023 prior to launching a petition, then refined it to improve the quality of the maps and make them interactive. I received a reply from Director Dorr on Tuesday thanking me for my communication but indicating it was too late to be included.
9. Boise is green and cares about disadvantaged populations — except when it doesn’t
10. The data is being cooked
Library staff have determined that there is no standard in the library “industry” for a proximity goal. Therefore, the number that they’ve settled on as a proximity goal is to have residents mostly within 3 miles of a library (you only leave out a bit of West Boise and SE Boise when you use 3 miles as your goal). However, when you actually set out to look at comparable cities (similar population, similar land area), you see that 2 miles or less is pretty typical. 2 miles vs 3 miles might sound like not much difference, but it is. Try it out for yourself.
We have to wonder as West Boiseans are we welcome in Boise? Do city staff and city hall care what we think? If staff had a predetermined outcome with the facilities study, why waste time and money on a mirage of “public” feedback. When the public spoke, they ignored it and buried the input.
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