A lot of people think something smells off about the library-to-the-mall proposal, and the town, despite considerable effort, has not successfully cleared the air.

Chapel Hill voters in 2003 approved a $16.2 million bond to expand the Chapel Hill Public Library. Architects were hired, the construction plans are complete, and the Town Council gave the go-ahead for the project to proceed.

Then Madison Marquette, which owns University Mall, made a startling proposal: Instead of expanding the library on its current site, move it into the mall space nowoccupied by Dillard's.

The expansion is on hold while the town explores that idea. The staff will bring a report to the council on Feb. 14.

We hope it's more detailed than what we've seen so far. The information the town has provided has been voluminous but vague and incomplete in some key areas.

The cost comparison the town produced, for example, appeared to indicate that, by staff estimates, moving the library into the mall could save the town some $4 million. But the cost of purchasing the mall space wasn't included in that equation. The asking price is $4 million. So much for the big savings.

Town Manager Roger Stancil says moving rather than expanding still might cost less, because the town might be able to negotiate that asking price down.

Of course, it might not be able to, either. We hope the Town Council won't proceed on such an important public issue on the basis of such a vague maybe.

The main driver behind the town staff's interest in Madison Marquette's proposition appears to be that if the town moves the library into the mall, it could then move the Parks and Recreation Department, which needs more space, into the existing library building.

Stancil said at a public meeting Wednesday that, if that were to happen, the new Parks and Rec facility wouldn't just be full of offices but would include classrooms and other public space.

Well, that's fine, but it's beside the point. Offices versus classrooms is not the issue that has so many people upset. What they want in the library building is the library - the expanded library they approved in 2003.

As Stancil said, the language in the bond resolution doesn't specify that the expansion must be done to the existing building. That's a technicalty; in 2003, what everyone understood they were voting on was an expansion of the existing library. Nobody said anything about moving it anywhere else, certainly not into University Mall. A new facility for Parks and Rec was not a part of the bond proposal.

To take the bond money that voters approved to expand the existing library and instead use it for this radically different plan, well, it amounts to paying for one thing and being delivered something else.

The town has put out a ton of information, welcomed public input and held public meetings; you can find the documents and public comments on its website. There's a lot there.

In spite of that, things such as the incomplete cost comparison, the push to swap out the library for Parks and Rec, and the reliance on the fine print of the bond resolution to justify a drastically different outcome than the one the voters intended have left some people feeling that there are some important missing pieces.