Chamber will move into old library

The Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce will relocate its Visitors Center and offices to the old library building on the corner of Main Avenue and Spruce Street.

The city council voted 4-1 last week to allow the chamber to lease the facility for $750 per month.

The chamber will be allowed to lease the building for the next five years and it will have the chance to renew the lease for another five years if approved by the city council after the first contract period is expired.

"It's a nicer building and as a representation of the community we felt that the library building is more appropriate," Chamber Director Cheryl Mills said.

Since a new library was built last year, the old library has been left vacant.

The old library building was built in 1988 through a $195,000 grant from the federal government, City Manager Eileen Stein said.

Part of the provision for obtaining that grant required the city to operate that building as a library until 2008, she said.

"It was a significant amount of money and we must continue operating as a library for the next two years or we will have to pay back that grant," Stein said.

The chamber will offer resource material to check-out, so it will operate in a "library spirit," which will satisfy the provisions in the grant, Stein said.

Councilor Lon Kellstrom voted in opposition because, he said, the city did not charge them enough for leasing the building.

"It wasn't a good transaction," he said. "Now the taxpayers will have to pay and there's no provision to increase their rent for the next five years."

The city will have to pay property taxes for the old library building since it is now operating again, Kellstrom said. The property taxes the city will now have to pay takes money from taxpayers, he said.

The federal grant the city received to build the library in 1988 is no longer operating under the auspices of the federal government. The responsibilities for the provisions under the grant now belong to the state.

According to Kellstrom, that makes paying back the grant problematic.

"If we did have to pay back the grant, who would you give the money to?" Kellstrom said. "The federal program that allowed the city to build the library is no longer around."

The chamber will share the old library space with Community Action Team of Sisters and the Sisters Country Historical Society, which will also make resource material available for the community to check-out.