Before the "new" library opens, there's painting to be done inside and out and interior door frames to be installed, facilities planner Carol Ching told the Board of Education Committee on Support Services yesterday.

A staff bathroom may not be finished because the contractor is awaiting a shipment of tile.

She said: "There's been noticeable action at the school" since a Star-Bulletin story on Sept. 28 chronicled the six years of delays since renovation of the former cafeteria building got under way with the goal of remodeling the 1939 structure for library use.

The last chapter in the continuing delays left the 790 students with no library access at all when school opened. The shelves were emptied in the old library, and books packed away during the summer. But the shelves did not get painted or moved into the new library.

"Time and again we see a project that is dormant all summer and incomplete when school opens," committee member Robert Fox commented. "One assumes a professional contractor knows when he needs tiles to complete a bathroom."

"The Board of Education has to stop accepting these kinds of excuses. This is the kind of thing that makes people shake their heads at government."

Committee Chairman Keith Sakata said he called for a report on the project after the newspaper story appeared. "I don't want to say this is a department problem, the responsibility goes back to DAGS (Department of Accounting and General Services)."

Assistant School Superintendent Alfred Suga told the committee that the library was a "pork barrel" project, initiated by a legislator. "It's still the department's position that the building should have been demolished. When you start renovation of an old structure like this, you don't know what to expect." From the beginning, when a simple roofing job developed into a collapsing structure, "the scoping was inadequate," Suga said.

The project was originally funded at $400,000 but the cost grew to $1.5 million, he said.

Although the new library will be bigger than the old, Suga said the space amounts to about half the department's standard for a school that size. It's a shortfall not likely to be remedied in a time of curtailed budgets and dire need for new classrooms, he said.