jonetta rose barras: Water, water everywhere at Tenley Library
Not again. That must have been the response from members of the Friends of the Tenley-Friendship Library after receiving a report from a branch official that the roof on the facility had once again sprung not one, but two, leaks.
Roof problems there are nearly as bad as those in the apartment building where I live. At least the owner of my complex has an excuse: The building is more than 50 years old.
The DC Public Library (DCPL) executive director and board of trustees don’t have a good excuse. Tenley-Friendship opened in its brand-new building only seven years ago, and almost from the beginning there was leaking, said Friends member Mary Alice Levine, who declared herself “frustrated.”
“The library has never had a functioning roof. Band-Aids have been applied to leaks, while routine maintenance has been ignored, and the situation [has] worsened,” Levine said.
I feel her.
I am equally exasperated — although I am not a frequent visitor of the facility. Still, the good, efficient government fanatic in me doesn’t like District taxpayers being inconvenienced, and I especially dislike watching their money wasted by inefficiency or incompetence. With DCPL, it may be both.
When I first reported about roof issues in August, executive director Richard Reyes-Gavilan and trustee president Gregory McCarthy acknowledged the Tenley roof had become a saga. Since the building’s opening, DCPL has installed gutter walls, increased maintenance, installed membrane in the gutters and reconstructed the skylight. Then a tear was discovered in the green roof membrane. The recent leaks are coming from the southern edge of the green roof, according to Levine.
DCPL spokesperson George Williams confirmed this latest episode. “We are contracting with a building envelope specialist to determine where the water is coming from and what we need to do,” he said.
The envelope — when correctly designed — is supposed to ensure that the building is protected, completely, from air and water. I am no architect, engineer or anything fancy like that. However, wouldn’t common sense have dictated that DCPL officials reach out to such an expert in August when water was cascading through various sections of the building?
Williams said the envelope specialist would be at Tenley-Friendship this week. Based on that assessment, the agency likely will have to put out a request for proposal to get the work done. Given the procurement process in DC, library users may expect more leaking.
It’s time to put an end to the patchwork strategy. Said Levine, “Tenley Library needs a new roof.”
Let’s hope that DCPL does a better job with the new libraries it is imagining as it conducts a master facilities planning process. Over the past decade, the city “has spent or allocated more than a half-billion dollars on library construction,” resulting in “19 of the 26 library buildings being new or fully renovated,” according to library officials.
During that period, the use of the libraries has grown commensurate with the increase in the overall DC population.
“While demand for library services is growing, it is also changing,” Reyes-Gavilan said in a statement announcing the master planning process. “Beyond ensuring that our buildings are in excellent repair for generations to come, this plan will ensure that this library continues to reflect the evolving needs of the residents in our unique neighborhoods.”
Williams said the planning process will examine three areas, including the conditions of current facilities (hopefully most are in better shape than the Tenley-Friendship roof). He said the assessment of future needs will discuss what happens when all those story-time participants become teens. DCPL will have to explore how to repurpose some of those spaces.
What’s more, some communities are simply without a library that fits its needs. Parklands-Turner in Congress Heights has one of the highest customer use rates in the system, said Williams, but it’s currently housed within a storefront.
“We know we need a larger home for residents in that community,” he continued, adding that DCPL will likely issue a request for bids for an independent review of where that new facility might be located.
“Community input, which has been an integral component of the success of the new and rebuilt libraries across the city, will be critical as we create this facilities master plan,” said Reyes-Gavilan. “While data about how people use their library is helpful, data alone doesn’t fully capture the impact or the importance of some of the work that libraries do. Ultimately, we are creating this plan to serve our customers, so it’s crucial that their voices are included.”
That all sounds good, but some residents still have a bitter taste in their mouths from their interaction with the library system. Earlier this year, for example, The DC Line’s Scott Nover wrote about the lawsuit filed by Ward 7 residents over the declining renovation budget for the Capitol View Library. In 2013-2014, the initial budget was $22 million; by 2018 that amount had slipped to $4.9 million. After some protest, the funding increased to $7.9 million. The residents’ lawsuit was dismissed in September, however — around the time work kicked off on exterior renovations. That doesn’t mean they are happy about the outcome, which could minimize community participation in the future planning process.
As citizens provide their input on the master facilities plan, they may want to get assurances about the scope and budget for future projects — plus some guarantee that all roofs will be leakproof.
jonetta rose barras is a DC-based freelance writer and host of The Barras Report television show. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.
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