Librarians in El Cerrito have their arms full — navigating book-carts around toddlers wiggling during 10 a.m. storytime, teens paging through homework after school and adults of all ages hustling to check-out before sunset.

After three-quarters of a century, the educational community hub at 6510 Stockton Ave. is worn like a well-read book.

Built in 1948, El Cerrito’s library is a quaint, mid-century modern building that is too small, seismically unsafe, built with hazardous materials and not fully accessible to seniors and people with disabilities. Some of the picture windows lining the 6,500-square-foot structure refuse to budge, there’s no air conditioning inside and hushed conversations are intermittently drowned out by the BART tracks rumbling just a stone’s throw away.

The city has researched ways to modernize its one-story library for over two decades — a proposal that’s twice been derailed by voters’ reluctance to tax themselves more to make that dream a reality.

Conceptual plans for a $21 million replacement are currently penciled into BART’s ongoing transformation envisioned for the El Cerrito Plaza Station, which would triple the library’s current footprint after construction begins by 2028, if all goes according to schedule. City officials reserved the proposed 20,000-square-foot space along Fairmount Avenue in 2019 – seen as an anchor for downtown El Cerrito – within plans for the mixed-use, transit-oriented project, which includes nearly 750 residential units, commercial retail and open space on six acres currently paved for parking.

The deal would also save El Cerrito an estimated $10 million, city officials say, compared to a standalone library. BART’s vision for Plaza Station is, technically, the only viable option on the table. Unless officials scale back plans to expand programming, staff and resources to meet the community’s needs, there aren’t any other vacant sites or accessible space to build a new library between Berkeley and Richmond, according to El Cerrito’s staff.

There’s no hard deadline for El Cerrito to finalize its plan to pay for the multimillion-dollar library, according to BART spokesperson Alicia Trost. The agency has flexibility to wait until city staffing working on the transit-oriented development can “secure financing and advance each phase of the project as it becomes feasible,” Trost confirmed Friday. “The development team has a 10-year window, beginning in 2025, to implement their full vision.”

But local leaders, former elected officials and a dozen other volunteers calling themselves Committee for a Plaza Station Library have begun asking their neighbors to hike property taxes during the June 2026 primary – optimistic that an alternative path to the ballot will finally secure funding to build a new library in El Cerrito.

Greg Lyman, a civil engineer who’s lived in El Cerrito since 1989 and spent 12 years on the El Cerrito City Council, said he drafted the language behind the 10-year special parcel tax to help residents proactively get on board with BART’s plan.

“I’m done waiting, because you can’t even have a conversation about whether it should be here or somewhere else until you have money,” Lyman said, adding that costs escalation will continue to balloon if the city can’t build at BART, whether the proposed non-ad valorem parcel tax succeeds or El Cerrito officials go down a different route. “If we don’t pass this, we could miss the train.”

Lyman said he pulled inspiration from San Rafeal’s Measure P, a 14.5-cent tax that 52% of voters approved in November. As a voter-backed initiative, Measure P only needed a supermajority of voters’ support to succeed – bucking the two-thirds requirement that’s sunk city-led efforts like the ones in El Cerrito.

“We are a community that is not shy in taxing ourselves,” Lyman said, pointing to the city’s request for a $30 million bond to pay for upgrades in 2016 – a ballot measure that was 3% shy of the required two-thirds threshold.

Even fewer residents surveyed in 2023 said they’d back another tax if it appeared on the ballot. Those projections continued to hover around 60% in two surveys taken last year, which prompted the El Cerrito City Council to punt tax talks originally planned for the 2024 primary election, as well as polling pulled in May.

“We are accused of trying to find a way to get around the two-thirds majority – that’s true,” Lyman said. When efforts that benefit the community, such as a new library, can be shelved by minority opinions, he said “that’s hand tying. Good governance is why you end up with this petition process to try and get to a simple majority.”

In a statement, El Cerrito said that “while the city is not actively pursuing a funding mechanism via ballot measure at this time  … this proposal represents a transformative opportunity for the community to secure a future library with the space needed to facilitate existing and expanded programming for children, teens, adults, job-seekers, and seniors.”

The newest, 17-cent parcel tax ballot measure will appear on June 2026 ballots if 15% of registered voters living in El Cerrito sign off on the plan by the end of October, Lyman said, but the El Cerrito City Council could push that timeline to November if the aptly named Committee for A Plaza Station Library submits authorized signatures from 10% of the electorate, roughly 2,000 residents.

An organization dubbed the El Cerrito Committee for Responsible Government (ECCRG) has urged against signing the petition – emphasizing that its scrutiny is directed at irresponsible budgeting, not libraries.

“We’ve seen this tactic before: claim a service will be maintained or enhanced, pass a tax, then redirect funds elsewhere. Now it’s happening again—with a library as the shiny new bait,” ECCRG wrote in one of its many blogs published in recent weeks. In another, the group opined “Let’s be honest: the current plan is flawed. There’s no dedicated parking, it’s tied to a risky transit-oriented development, and it ignores the city-owned existing library site — a location that already has infrastructure and could accommodate a 12,000 sq. ft. modern library for the same cost or less.”

Marc Joffe, president of the Contra Costa County Taxpayers Association, said the organization is concerned “the ballot measure will be the result of a voter initiative which only requires 50%+1. But the city is using taxpayer funds to support the initiative. Its role should be totally neutral, providing unbiased information about the proposed measure.”

Moreover, only 55% of respondents to a May survey approved of the way El Cerrito manages and spends taxpayer dollars, according to a memo the city commissioned from The Lew Edwards Group – perceptions that echo stark nationwide trends about trust in government spending.

Meanwhile, space is cozy but cramped at 6510 Stockton Ave., where every day hundreds of patrons access the El Cerrito’s library books, magazines, computers, seeds and thousands of other free resources — and Contra Costa County library officials, who oversee the site within a 26-branch regional system, have capped the facility at 46 hours a week due its size.

Lyman believes residents’ push for a parcel tax is the city’s best chance for an upgrade.

“This process is not nimble enough to wait,” Lyman said.