After spending more than six months working on the Stockton Legacy Library & Community Resource Center, Naomi Perry came to the Stockton Town Council meeting on Feb. 1 concerned about the future of the project.
Perry said Stockton Town Mayor Thomas Karjola, then pro-tem mayor, told her space for the library and community center in the basement of Stockton Town Hall was being turned over to the police department.
“Yesterday, I was called down and told it wasn’t going to be able to be opened because of the (Americans with Disabilities Act) access and a failure, I guess, to ever plumb the bathrooms down there,” she said.
Most of the basement was designated for the library and community center by former Mayor Mark Whitney, whose term ended on Jan. 31. Karjola said before Whitney’s resignation, it had been impossible to stop the library, which he said needs to meet ADA accessibility requirements and can only be accessed by two staircases.
“It’s so unfair for you to have been allowed to put your blood sweat and tears and your heart and soul into this before knowing we can even open it,” Karjola said. “Because if we can’t meet ADA requirements, we can’t open it up.”
The decision to move the police department into the basement is the result of needing more office space in the ground floor of the Town Hall, Karjola said. He said Stockton Justice Court Judge Ron Powell needs a desk, as well as the mayor, a position Karjola was later appointed to at the same Feb. 1 meeting.
“If I’m chosen to be the mayor, I don’t want to be hovering over the officer workers over there,” Karjola said.
In response to a resident’s question later during the meeting, Karjola said he intends to work full-time as the city’s mayor. The Stockton mayor is part of a five-member council and receives a $12,000 annual salary.
Perry said she would work to get the library and community center aligned with ADA requirements. Karjola said the town is also looking to get the Town Hall on the National Register of Historic Places; the library could then apply for an ADA exception.
“We can,” Perry said. “We can do anything we put our minds to.”
Perry also said no one asked her about ADA compliance or the steps the library and community center was taking to achieve it before she was told to move out of the north end of the Town Hall’s basement. A finished room expected to house adult fiction books will not be affected by the police department’s proposed move.