Lake Stevens has been without a library since June 2021 due to its demolition for renovations to North Cove Park, and plans for the future of a library in Lake Stevens have been unclear and recently, controversial.

An announcement was made about the future for a Lake Stevens Library in a Jan. 20 email to Lake Stevens Library patrons. 

Sno-Isle Libraries planned to develop a larger early learning focused library with $3.1 million in state grants already secured at a location in the Chapel Hill neighborhood owned by the district. 

The City of Lake Stevens recently proposed cutting ties with Sno-Isle and “privatizing library services in the city,” Sno-Isle Libraries announced in a statement.

The City of Lake Stevens would not have been able to cut ties with Sno-Isle without approval from the community on a general election ballot, but the proposed departure from Sno-Isle didn’t get far. 

Community outrage over the potential departure from Sno-Isle Libraries infrastructure and resources seemed to dissuade the city from the Idea. 

Comments under the initial announcement were passionately opposed to the idea, citing the burden a library lacking infrastructure would have on the public.

“As a person who uses the library on a regular basis, I welcome the matching funds. Moving from the Sno-isle system, however, would be an enormous loss of programs and resources that the city would be hard pressed to replace! Please keep us a part of Sno-isle!” a commenter by the name of Soxner said. 

After frustration from library patrons was recognized, a joint statement was released from the City of Lake Stevens and Sno-Isle Libraries days later. 

“Conversations have taken place that provide both parties with confidence that the partnership will continue and a new Lake Stevens Library will be funded by Sno-Isle Libraries,” a Jan. 25 statement said. 

Planning for the new library is still in the early stages of development. 

In the meantime, community members can utilize the temporary Library located on 2211 Grade Road inside the old police station which offers full library services. 

“People can go there to hang out, or do work, or print if they need to and don’t have a printer,” sophomore Katie Farnhan said.

Lake Stevens School District has been working with Sno-Isle to integrate and provide full access to its resources for its students.

“What we’ve always had a problem with is that when we try to do drives for students to get library cards we tend to get about 10 to 15 percent of students signing up for library cards. One of the barriers for students is that they can be charged a fine or fee, and so Sno-Isle really changed how they are fined and what they fine for. And now it’s universal so every high school student, unless they opt-out, will get one. Every student in the school district,” Lake Stevens Librarian Kit Shanholtzer said.

Students’ usernames will be their student numbers with LS at the front. Students will have their own passwords. Students will have access to all of Sno-Isle’s resources, including ebooks, audiobooks, tutoring, and more. 

Some students such as Junior Elliott Chappel have experienced the limited selection of books at the school library. Sno-Isle’s partnership with the District will hopefully alleviate this issue.

“I ask them to order books they don’t have for me, and if they are unable to, I find a way to get it, outside of school,” Chappel said.

“We’re still working on if we could get physical books at the high school. We have 12,000 fiction novels in here, which is great, but it’s not Sno-Isle’s 1.8 million right, whatever they have. They have a lot of stuff that we don’t. The other thing it has is Ebsco which is our research database, they have one on steroids. It’s way better than ours. They also have access to New York Times, free access to all these publications that we don’t have,” Shanholtzer said. 

“They also have some really cool programs for kids too, it’s going to be great for elementary students as well,” Shanholtzer said

Roll out of the partnership will take place early March, students can expect an email with more information at this time.