Library board debates whether fees are pricing out community groups from meeting rooms

The Library Board spent much of Monday's meeting hashing out a new rental policy for its three meeting rooms, proposing a $25 non-refundable reservation fee for all users, a $100 setup fee for theater-style seating in the large room, and hourly rates of $50 for the medium room, $125 for the large room, and $30 for the small room, with fee waivers for government bodies and Larkspur-serving nonprofits. Insurance would be required only for rentals of the large room, Room 2.

Board members pushed back on parts of the plan, questioning whether renters should really lose their deposit if the city itself cancels a booking, and worrying the rate structure could shut out smaller community groups. The Library Director told the board a writers' group had inquired about a recurring monthly booking in the large room that would have cost about $750 — and never followed up once they saw the fee schedule.

One board member floated a sliding-scale alternative, charging more for the first hour and less for subsequent hours, to keep rooms from sitting empty while still making them affordable for groups like writers' clubs or student tutoring sessions. Staff will clarify that the insurance requirement applies only to Room 2, fix page-numbering errors in the application packet, remove ambiguous language about alcohol being 'sold' at events, and revisit the whole fee structure in December once staff can see which groups the costs are actually deterring.

Elsewhere, the director reported the library has hired four new part-time pages who have already cleared a backlog at the book drop, and recruitment is underway for two full-time Library Assistant positions that staff hope will let the library move to six-day-a-week service, likely by late fall or early winter. A Friends of the Library book sale is set for Sunday, August 23, and staff flagged chronic parking overcapacity — worsened by the nearby Corte Madera library's construction closure — along with heavy demand for the outdoor book locker.