Plans to turn the former Carnegie Library building into a literacy center suffered a setback Wednesday as city commissioners peppered organizers with a questions about the center’s funding and planning.

At a study session Wednesday, a majority of city commissioners said they were having second thoughts about a decision last year that cleared the way for the Hughes-Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning to move into the former Carnegie Library building at Ninth and Vermont streets.

Commissioners said they now wanted the center’s organizers to look at partnering with Lawrence Public Library officials as they plan for a major expansion downtown.

“I’m struggling with whether the community can afford to fund both a significantly improved 21st-century library, which I think we desperately need, and a literacy center that is separate and apart from the library,” said City Commissioner David Schauner.

Commissioners also said they were concerned that the organizers were now seeking city funding to cover part of the center’s operations. Organizers presented a draft budget that asked for $55,000 in city funds in 2005 to fund director and assistant director positions. The city funding would grow to $145,900 in 2006 and decrease to zero by 2010, assuming that the center attracted all the grants and donations it envisioned.

City Commissioner David Dunfield said that part of the center’s plans concerned him.

“I see over half the budget comes from grants,” Dunfield said. “I’m concerned about how realistic that is.”

Organizers, though, said they had spent considerable time talking with community groups about the project and had received positive feedback.

“There is a certain amount of optimism involved here, but it isn’t just pie-in-the-sky optimism,” said Hans Fischer, an organizer and vice president of the Kansas Library Assn. “It is based on many meetings where people have enthusiastically supported this project.”

City Commissioner Sue Hack said the goal of having a center to promote literacy was a good one.

“What I’m hung up on is the Carnegie part of the Hughes-Carnegie Center,” Hack said.

But some organizers balked at the idea of the center becoming part of a larger library project that city commissioners currently are studying.

Beth Schultz, an organizer of the Hughes-Carnegie project, said that because of the embarrassment that is sometimes associated with illiteracy, an ultra-public setting like a library was not always the best setting for a literacy program.

“I think it needs to be in a setting where the maximum number of people using its services feel comfortable,” she said.

City commissioners are expected to discuss the subject further at a future commission meeting.

— Staff reporter Chad Lawhorn can be reached at 832-6362.