A surge of public opposition to the closure of Rockrimmon Library later this year hit the Colorado Springs City Council on Tuesday.

Well over 100 people visited City Hall Tuesday afternoon to speak about the library or show support to the Save Rockrimmon Library Campaign. The council chambers were filled to the fire code capacity. A small group listened to the meeting from the hallway outside, cheering along with the public comment on a five-second delay.

Pikes Peak Library Board of Trustees voted on Oct. 16 to close the Rockrimmon branch at the end of November. Trustees said the closure was largely being done for financial reasons, as it had the most expensive lease of the handful of leased libraries and the district was behind on maintenance across all buildings.

Pikes Peak Library District operates as an independent agency with its own budget and taxing district. Board members are jointly appointed by the City Council and the El Paso County Board of Commissioners, which was why the group of speakers asked the council to step in however they could.

“We ask you to be part of the solution and not merely passive observers to a decision that will leave our city even worse off,” city resident Carl Leivers told the council.

City Council members stood by their previous vote to not provide the library district $200,000 to keep the library open. By the end of nearly three hours of comment, the council voiced an appetite to get answers directly from the Board of Trustees.

“I have not been convinced by (Councilmember Dave) Donelson. I have been convinced by you. You guys have organized and put together a great cause and effect here,” Councilmember David Leinweber said.

The council heard statements from an 8-year-old library visitor named Aria who regularly visited with her siblings and elderly residents who spoke about the problem of forcing people to drive farther to access a library.

Ken Pfeil, principal at Trailblazer Elementary School, spoke about the importance the nearby library had for some of the school’s reading programs. Several advocates said it did not make sense to close one of the libraries with the highest use in the city and a relatively small backlog of deferred maintenance to fix in the future.

“Every single person that I have talked to has been undone by this decision. Every single person has stories about how this library has affected them,” said Jessica Williams, a parent and former librarian at Rockrimmon.

The Save Rockrimmon Library campaign has raised around $30,000 in pledges to cover the library’s cost since the closure was announced. Campaign spokesperson Elizabeth Carter said those pledges would only be collected and spent if the library remained open next year.

Any future of the city’s response probably will depend on what happens during the Library Board of Trustees meeting, Nov. 20. The Save Rockrimmon group has said its members will attend to ask questions and push for a last-minute change of mind by the board.

Halfway through the public comments, Councilmember Nancy Henjum took a call from Library Board Director Dora Gonzales. Henjum, one of the city’s two liaisons to the library district, told the public that the board had offered to answer questions through written online statements but did not want to hold a special meeting about Rockrimmon.

Henjum told the crowd that was not “an appropriate response” to the volume of concern.

“We don’t want the country looking at us and saying we don’t support libraries. We need to do something. I don’t know exactly what that looks like, but we will,” Henjum said.

Henjum and multiple councilmembers said that if the board was unwilling or unable to answer public questions at that meeting, they would be asked to answer council questions on the record during the next work session on Nov. 25. While the council cannot require board members or library CEO Teona Shainidze-Krebs to attend the meeting, the offer could increase the pressure.

Donelson had attempted to get the CEO and board members to attend the council’s work session on Tuesday morning. Donelson said he couldn’t get the two other votes needed to add it to the agenda, which he called “sad representation.”

Council President Randy Helms defended the decision, saying he wanted to give the Board of Trustees time to explain the decision themselves before making that call. Helms said the district had enough money in its reserves and that he did not think this was an issue that would be swayed by city funds.

Leinweber floated a possible next step: a formal resolution the council would vote on to oppose the planned closure of the library.

Leinweber also asked a question about the removal process for Board of Trustees members. The City Attorney’s Office advised the council that the process for a removal was unclear but would need to be jointly done with the county commissioners. The attorney also said it could take a high level of criminal action or misconduct to remove board members with cause.

To several of the speakers, including accountant Chris Johnson, who took a deep dive into the district’s financial plan, this was an issue that deserved a big response from the city.

“I know this city has not used that oversight power in this way before, but the library district board has never closed libraries before. It is an unprecedented action and it requires an unprecedented reaction,” Johnson said.