Sebastopol's Library Is Being Repaired as a Bridge. December Is When the Council Takes Up Where It Leads.

Sonoma County Library's page for the Bodega Avenue branch starts with good news. Library To Go service "will resume Monday, October 19, 2026!" A few lines down it says the library building remains closed.

The building has been closed since June. The service has moved into the Community Room. The repairs now planned are meant to get the old building working again, not to replace it. Library Director Erika Thibault said so plainly in July, in remarks reported by the Press Democrat: "It makes good sense to repair the existing building while we work on a long-term plan for a future, larger library." The City Council plans to take up that long-term question again at its second meeting in December.

How the Community Room Setup Works Right Now

If you used to drop into the stacks after school pickup, the routine has changed. Library To Go runs out of the Community Room at 7140 Bodega Avenue on a split schedule.

Here's what you can do in that room:

• Pick up holds and use BiblioBox
• Browse new arrivals and the "Lucky Day" shelf
• Check out at the self-checkout station
• Get help at the staff desk
• Return books at the outside drop
• Use Wi-Fi outside the building

Sebastopol holds go to that room again. Over the summer some patrons drove to Forestville for them, and the Forestville Community Library page now points Sebastopol holds back to the Community Room.

Some programs have moved around town. Sonoma County Library's events calendar listed Babytime at the Sebastopol Community Center Youth Annex during the week of October 12. Baby Village was listed on October 20 at Sebastopol Ballet School, 8196 Bodega Avenue. The library has also said it will keep running programs at Ives Park, and that it is talking with the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center about adding more.

For a full branch with open stacks, the nearest options keep their own hours:

• Forestville Community Library, 7050 Covey Road: weekdays 3 to 7 pm, Saturdays 10 am to 2 pm
• Guerneville Regional Library, 14107 Armstrong Woods Road: open seven days, with evening hours until 8 pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays
• Rincon Valley Regional Library, 6959 Montecito Boulevard in Santa Rosa: full service, with the same seven-day schedule as Guerneville

What Turned Up Behind the Walls

The schedule makes more sense once you know how the closure unfolded. It happened in stages, and the moisture problem grew larger each time crews opened another wall.

1. June 4. The branch closed to the public after staff saw peeling wallpaper in the Staff Work Room and the Teen Reading Area, along with signs of moisture.
2. June 5. Crews made exploratory openings in the walls where the wallpaper had peeled and found mold inside the cavities.
3. June 15. The City of Sebastopol identified the mold as Stachybotrys, commonly called black mold. Testing found elevated moisture in wall assemblies throughout the building.
4. August 10. Library To Go opened for the first time in the Community Room.
5. August 26. The city reported that clearance testing after cleanup had passed in the areas affected in June.
6. October 3 to 11. Crews found more trouble while removing wallpaper in a staff area. Library To Go closed again, and new environmental testing took place on October 5. The library planned to reopen the room on October 12. It actually reopened on October 19.

The likely cause sits outside the building. Reporting by the Press Democrat found that the opened walls showed dry rot and decay in parts of the exterior wood framing. City staff believe drainage around the foundation helped water get in.

The Repair Is Sized to Reopen the Building

This is where the short-term fix and the long-term plan connect. On September 15, the council voted 5 to 0 to award the rehabilitation contract to DMR Builders. The contract is $74,250, plus up to $14,850 in change orders, so construction can cost no more than $89,100. The work covers damaged wall framing, brick veneer where needed, insulation, drywall, trim and interior finishes.

The likely cause is not in that contract. Assessing the siding, the moisture barrier, and the grading and drainage around the building has been moved to a future Capital Improvement Program project. The city's report gives no schedule or budget for it.

Here are the costs across the city's three phases:

• Phase I, emergency response: $47,687.55
• Phase II, mold remediation: $173,196.22
• Phase III, reconstruction: up to $89,100

That comes to about $310,000 in total. The city has said the final remediation numbers are still being worked out. Sonoma County Library paid $23,843.77 toward the first phase and agreed to contribute another $75,000. July estimates were closer to $500,000. The September bid package is the later and more specific figure.

The Press Democrat reported in September that construction was expected to start by the end of that month and take about 45 days. After that, staff will need time to put materials and furniture back in place. As of this week, the city has not announced a construction start, the October 5 test results, or a date for the full building to reopen. The October 6 and October 20 council agendas had no library item.

The Building Was Too Small Before the Mold

The repair will bring back a library that people were already outgrowing. The branch is about 10,000 square feet. Sonoma County Library's 2019 Facilities Master Plan recommended replacing it with a branch of at least 20,000 square feet. As the Sebastopol Times reported, the library had been one of the busiest in the county before the mold was found.

That shortage is why the city's Building the Commons Committee spent the past year on a larger idea. The plan would move the library, the senior center and City Hall into one civic hub at the long-empty O'Reilly campus on Gravenstein Highway North. The committee came out of an earlier library group called LANTERN. Its members included Councilmembers Stephen Zollman and Phill Carter, Copperfield's CEO RM Horrell, and representatives of the senior center and the county library system.

The committee's figures, as reported by the Sebastopol Times:

• O'Reilly campus, housing the library, senior center, City Hall and a cultural center: about $18 million in capital costs, or about $20 million with renovations
• Rebuilding the library alone on its current downtown site: about $36 million

Council members questioned both numbers. Vice Mayor Sandra Maurer thought the $36 million figure was too high. She asked whether anyone had priced an addition to the current library, possibly on the area next door where a large cell tower now stands. City Attorney Alex Mog explained that IRS rules generally limit private use of a government-financed building to roughly 5 to 10 percent of its floor space. That would cut into the committee's plan to rent out part of the O'Reilly buildings to help pay for them. Mayor Jill McLewis pointed out that the city would lose the roughly $26,000 a year in property taxes the current owners pay.

Twenty people spoke during public comment, and they were evenly split. Some speakers from the senior center described long waitlists for classes. Others said moving the library would take foot traffic away from downtown and put it somewhere most people could reach only by car. Councilmember Carter served on the committee and still supports the idea. In an open letter published by the Sebastopol Times, he explained how he weighed it:

"When that many neighbors tell me the downtown library is worth protecting, that outweighs my 80. That's how this should work."

What the Council Agreed to Revisit in December

The council did not grant any of the committee's requests. It declined to fund a $40,000 to $50,000 fiscal and design review of the O'Reilly site, and it did not send the library director a formal letter asking about shared capital planning. Instead it voted 4 to 1 for three narrower steps:

• Consider forming a new ad hoc committee at its second meeting in December
• Include downtown sites in that evaluation
• Time the ad hoc so its work feeds into the midyear budget review

Carter, Hinton, Zollman and Maurer voted yes. Mayor McLewis voted no. The signed minutes record the vote as Minute Order 2026-251.

The second point is the important one for the building on Bodega Avenue. If a December ad hoc forms, it will be studying downtown locations, possibly including the current site, at the same time the repaired building reopens there. What that committee recommends could shape how many years the repaired 10,000-square-foot building has to keep serving the town.

When the December agenda comes out, it will show whether the ad hoc is up for a vote. The city's library closure page is where construction and reopening updates have been posted so far. Questions about testing and repairs can go to the city by email with "Library" in the subject line.

A downtown library, a senior center and City Hall all affect what a Sebastopol address is like day to day. If you're thinking about how civic projects like this one could shape your street over the next few years, Crystal Davis is glad to talk it through. Let's talk about your next move.