Ex-City Manager to Lead New Library Fundraising Drive

El Cerrito's former City Manager, Gary Porkorny, will supervise fundraising for the campaign to build a new El Cerrito Library, according to an email Sunday from the the grassroots committee behind the campaign.

"I have agreed to head up the fundraising efforts for our new group," Porkorny said in comments quoted in the fall 2012 newsletter from the New Library Campaign. The newsletter was delivered to email subcribers Sunday.

The ad hoc campaign by a group of residents to rebuild the aging, cramped El Cerrito Library was launched in April and held two public meetings at the library in August to gather ideas on how to build support and raise funds.

Pokorny, who was El Cerrito's City Manager from 1989 to 2000 and has lived in El Cerrito for more than 23 years, said immediate fundraising would focus on the outreach effort and later shift to supporting a bond measure or other main funding source that the group and city choose to pursue. The city owns the library, while the staffing and materials are provided by the Contra Costa County Library system.

Pokorny's comments were contained in an interview quoted partially in the newsletter and posted in full on the New Library Campaign website.

"We plan to partner with the Friends of the El Cerrito Library in their important work to make the library an exciting and vital lifelong learning center for the entire community," Pokorny said.

Those who would like more information or would like to donate can contact the the New Library Campaign through its website

He said the need for a new library is underscored by the contrast with what other nearby communities have accomplished.

"Today, when compared to the several new libraries in our Contra Cost County system (Hercules, Orinda, Lafayette, Clayton, Walnut Creek) and new and refurbished libraries in Albany and Berkeley, it is clear that our 60 year-old library is completely worn out and technologically obsolete as well as much too small for the many demands that our current population is putting on the building," he said.

The current library opened in 1949 and was expanded in 1960. A 2006 "needs assessment" reportby a San Francisco-based library consulting firm, Page + Moris, found that the current 6,500-square-foot library is only a third as large as it should be.

At the library campaign's first public meeting on Aug. 2, Assistant City Manager Karen Pinkos said a 2007 estimate for a 20,000-square-foot library complete with library equipment and supplies was between $18 million and $20 million.