Heather Wright/The Independent

There seems to be little political will to close the Port Lambton Library and move services to Sombra.

The Lambton County Library system has been advocating the move since a daycare moved out of the Sombra building, leaving lots of room to expand programming.

County council agreed it would be best to expand into the entire facility, adding an accessible washroom, more computers, a larger book collection and a maker room at a cost of about $285,000.

After the renovation is complete, the Port Lambton Library would close and the 12 hours there would be transferred to the new Sombra Library just over six kilometres away.

While county council has already approved the move, St. Clair Township Mayor Jeff Agar made it clear he didn’t want Port Lambton closed. Monday, when library staff came to council to pitch the idea, there were others who raised concerns about the project. 

“I’ve been fighting closing libraries for 30 years at least,” said Deputy Mayor Steve Miller.

“I don’t know how you could justify spending that much money in Sombra to put in all the amenities you want there,” Miller said. “That’s a lot of money. Do you really think that it’s going to be utilized to that point? There’s not that many people in Sombra and Port Lambton.”

General Manager of Cultural Service Andrew Meyer said it makes sense to combine the two libraries to provide more modern services.

“We’d be able to pool our resources together, enhance the collection size, bring both collections together. So, by continuing to split our resources, that does present challenges,” he told council.

“We’re not in the business of closing libraries. We would prefer not to, but we are focused on how do we enhance the service that we do provide? And this seemed like a practical, cost effective approach to doing that for a general area, as opposed to an individual community.”

Councillor Cathy Langis is concerned some people in Port Lambton will not be able to get to the redesigned facility and wouldn’t use some of the options considered to provide service in that area. 

“I’m thinking that people that cannot get to a library are not people that are going to want to have a vending machine or be mailing their books or be picking them up in lockers,” she said. “They are not internet friendly, so they can’t go on and pick out books on there to have delivered to Port Lambton. I think those are very frustrating for our senior people.”

Miller agreed. “I’m more concerned with the older people who just want to go get a book to read. The computer literate people, young people, don’t need libraries, to be quite honest with you, they can find anything they want to the internet. So that’s why I’m more concerned about seeing a place like Port Lambton being closed, where the older people no longer have access to books.”

But Councillor Holly Foster said there may be a need in the future to merge smaller rural libraries to provide services. 

“I think the time is coming where we’re going to have to consolidate. And so I would like to put a motion that we have a town hall or work with staff to coordinate something to explain to the public, the ‘whys’ as well as staff can explain why we may have to go down (that) road and get rid of some facilities.”

Both Councillor Bill Myers and Brad Langstaff agreed with the idea. They were concerned that while the county and the township had been talking about the plan, the people of Port Lambton may not know their local library could close in the near future.

Until there is public consultation, library officials say they will likely paint and do some minor repairs at the Sombra facility.