Building improvements sought at Richville Library

STANDISH – Lisa Moody and her son Caleb, of Cole Hill Road in Standish, are the kinds of folks the board of directors at the Richville Library want to help.

The Moody family, which walks to the library on a regular basis to pick up books and movies, are miles from the nearest hub of activity either in Standish Corner or North Windham. The Richville Library is their little corner of culture, as well, as it is for the hundreds of other year-round and summer residents of Richville, an area of Standish along Route 114 on the western shore of Sebago Lake.

Karen McNutt, volunteer librarian at the Richville Library for 35 years, has seen a lot of bad times for the little library. Vandalism last Halloween, in which computers and a cell phone were taken, plus a devastating fire and basement flooding are just a few of the obstacles that have been thrown in the library’s way.

Now, the library board wants to expand, to be bigger and better for people like the Moodys, as well as the numerous organizations that could benefit from an updated building.

Along with McNutt, Martha Tame, a member of the board of the directors, is spearheading the effort.

“I am just somebody who would very much like see this improved, and there are a lot of improvements that need to be made,” said Tame, who lives about a mile from the library.

Among the needed improvements at the library, which is situated at the corner of Cole Hill Road and Route 114, are installing new windows, soundproofing walls, re-roofing, re-painting the exterior and interior. In short, just about anything that could use some work is going to get some work, if Tame and the rest of the board can raise the money.

At a Sept. 22 board meeting, the go-ahead was given for Tame and others to solicit grants from institutions interested in helping community libraries, such as the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation and the Narragansett Foundation in Buxton. But to qualify for donations, the library has to prove the community backs the effort. So, the library is now seeking donations in the form of pledges from those interested in helping the library reinvent itself.

“If they’re going to give us $25,000, they want to know their $25,000 is going to be spent well and the place is going to be maintained afterward,” Tame said. “We are in the process of trying to let the area know what our thoughts are, what our plans are, what our wishes and needs are. And we’re planning a pledge drive. A person could pledge money for one window, someone else might pledge for a toilet, because these grants want to know that the community is on board. They don’t want just four or five people deciding what’s going to happen.”

Tame said the board is hoping construction can start next June, but warns that without grant funding the project could stall and take “longer than a year.” The board is hoping for the best and also hoping that when the money does start flowing, volunteers will as well.

“There will be a lot of need for volunteers once we get the money,” she said, in order to help with labor.

The Richville Library, which can be easily missed since it sets in among some trees off Route 114, has 290 cardholders and runs off cash and media (books, videos, etc.) donations. The two-room library also features a third community room, which serves local Boy Scout and Cub Scout meetings, as well as community group meetings like the Masons and Lions. But, Tame and others are hoping that with a little sprucing up, and perhaps some major overhauls like a renovated bathroom and new kitchen, the library could become a hub of activity to include community suppers and even small weddings and other events that could generate some cash flow for the library into the future.

“Why are we doing all this? Mainly because there is not much in the way of places people can go within six to eight miles from here to have meetings, to have Scouts,” Tame said. “We need that. It’d be nice to have Literacy Volunteers again, story hour again, tutors and students again. None of those do we have now. And we’d like to.”