Residents rally to save Colorado Springs library on brink of closure

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – Hundreds of Colorado Springs residents attended the Pikes Peak Library District Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday night as a last-ditch effort to save the public. Rockrimmon Library.

The library will close on December 1. This comes after the board voted Not renewing the library’s lease due to financial problems.

One expression In an announcement posted on their website on Nov. 8, the board described the decision to close Rockrimmon as a difficult one.

“A library provides access to resources and materials for everyone in the community, so considering its closure is contrary to our hopes for PPLD. But our District provides access to nearly 700,000 people throughout El Paso County. We must make decisions that will sustain the entire District.”

More than 250 community members attended Wednesday’s board meeting to show their support for keeping the Rockrimmon location open, and another 119 people tuned in virtually.

Former Rockrimmon Library director Steve Abbott said he was pleased with the turnout.

“This shows that the community will not give up and they will fight to keep this library open,” he said.

Throughout most of the nearly five-hour meeting, 43 speakers took turns imploring board members to delay the library’s closure, extend the lease for another year and rethink their decision to close the library in the first place.

Abbott, one of those who spoke before the board, said closing the library would leave a huge gap for the 30,000 people who live in the area.

“It leaves a huge library desert in the Rockrimmon area,” he said. “Now in order for a child to use the library, they would have to go over I-25, under I-25, over the Academy, under the Academy, to get to a library, and that’s six miles from where Rockrimmon is.”

Speaker and Rockrimmon resident Jennifer Walker said closing the library would also deprive the area of a much-needed community center.

“There’s no YMCA, there’s nothing else,” he said. “This is where we meet other moms when we’re desperate to talk to another human who isn’t a toddler, this is where we go to work when we need a quiet space, this is where older people come to use the computer or talk through books.”

The fate of the Rockrimmon Library was not on the board’s agenda, and those who left the meeting told 11 News the meeting ended without any decisions being made.

Walker said residents are still exploring their legal options.

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