During COVID-19, we learned that almost any service could survive without its building. Schools taught without classrooms. Churches gathered without pews. Restaurants cooked without dining rooms. Libraries ran storytimes in parks and book clubs on Zoom. We adapted, and it was remarkable. Irvine’s librarians have done the same — the difference is that schools got their classrooms back. For the last 30 years, I have waited for better library services in Irvine — not because OC Public Libraries failed us, but because a county system serving 1.3 million people across 33 cities cannot know any one community the way a city’s library staff can. Irvine residents deserve a library system with the permanent, funded infrastructure they were promised, and they deserve it sooner rather than later.
When Irvine’s new Library Services Manager described her team’s first summer on the job, the line stuck: “We’re doing library without a library.” Less than a year ago, in August 2025, while Heritage Park and University Park were still closed for transition, the Irvine Public Library team was running storytimes in parks, pop-up libraries at community centers, teen study halls, book clubs, and family Saturdays — across six community centers stretching from Deerfield to Northwood.
These were not county employees on loan. They were people Irvine had recruited, interviewed, and hired — at a pace of roughly one new hire per week during the buildout phase — to build a public institution from scratch. A City Librarian. A Children’s Librarian. A Heritage Branch Supervisor. A Principal Librarian for Community Engagement, recognized nationally as a 2025 Library Journal Mover and Shaker for reducing senior loneliness and building community well-being. Each holding a master’s degree in Library and Information Science. Each having left an established career elsewhere to come to Irvine. Each of them welcoming the community to what Tagore called the library — a feast — and meaning it.
Heritage Park and University Park opened August 3, 2025. Katie Wheeler formally reopened as part of the Irvine system on March 7, 2026. Three branches, fully operational, staffed by Irvine employees, serving Irvine residents — for the first time in the city’s history. By February 2026, more than 34,000 Irvine Public Library cards had been issued, 83 percent to city residents.
A City That Keeps Remaking Itself
The library’s first year succeeded despite the conditions under which it was launched. The city entered the transition with only about 65 percent of the funding needed. University Park and Katie Wheeler are leased — both in buildings Irvine does not own, costing close to $1 million a year in lease payments. University Park’s lease cannot be renewed past June 2030 — and the county has indicated it may not extend it even that far. That deadline is not abstract — it is three and a half years away. If nothing is resolved, the city could be left with a single city-owned branch: Heritage Park — the busiest library in all of Orange County — serving a city of nearly 340,000 people.
Meanwhile, Irvine projects a structural budget shortfall reaching $47 million annually by decade’s end, driven by staff costs that rose more than 50 percent in five years. Into this environment, three council members — all facing re-election this November, on the very ballot they want to redesign — are pushing to add ranked choice voting (RCV) by a self-imposed June 23 deadline.
What RCV Would Do — and Not Do
Some who share my concern about neighborhood libraries may see RCV differently — as a tool to change who gets elected and therefore what gets built. It’s an understandable instinct. But changing the electoral system to change the library outcome is a three-election solution to a three-year problem. University Park’s lease expires June 2030. That cannot wait for 2028 elections, a new council majority, and a policy reversal. The neighborhood libraries that Irvine residents use today need decisions made now, not after the next electoral experiment plays out.
Ranked choice voting has genuine democratic arguments behind it. But it would not fund a library. It would not resolve whether Irvine builds neighborhood branches or concentrates resources in a Great Park landmark. It would not extend a lease or add a single storytime. Its costs — capped at $710,440 if voters approve it – are real money in a city already spending beyond its means. The June deadline is one the council set for itself — which means it can also choose to revisit it.
Libraries change lives. I’ve seen it across my career as a community college librarian and researcher. Irvine’s new library team has already proven it. I talk to library visitors every chance I get, and what I hear most often is gratitude for the children’s collection at Heritage Park — a collection many families didn’t know existed a year ago. There are thousands of elementary school children in Irvine who still don’t know it exists. At the library planning meetings this Spring, residents still wanted “books” and quiet spaces for children and teens.
Irvine’s librarians showed up for our children, teens, seniors, and everyone who needs a library – the “palaces of the people” and the “feast” for the mind. They did the work. They built something. Will Irvine’s residents and their council stand behind them — or get distracted by a reform that changes how votes are counted?
Anita Coleman is an Irvine resident who has watched the evolution of its public libraries for 30 years — from early proposals for a great metropolitan library at the OC Great Park, through the 2023 Johnson Favaro feasibility study, to the 2026 Great Park Library planning meetings. She holds a PhD in Library and Information Science and writes Infophilia: A Positive Psychology of Information, a weekly Substack.
For a different view on this issue, consider:
