SMITHFIELD — The Greenville Public Library has shrunk its expansion plans and tonight will ask the Town Council to back a $6.4-million bond issue to move from Greenville to land it owns on Pleasant View Avenue.

The library trustees in January had sought a $13.5-million bond issue.

In a June 23 letter to Stephen R. Archambault, president of the Town Council, Domine Vescera Ragosta, president of the library’s Board of Trustees, asked that the revised bond issue be placed on the November ballot. “The library’s needs have not changed,” Ragosta said. “Overcrowding has reached a crisis stage, and we feel we must act now.”

Voter attitude toward library bond issues has been spotty. In November 2004 the voters approved $1.5 million in bonds to acquire the land on Pleasant View Avenue, but rejected a $10.7-million bond issue to build the library.

In a related matter, Town Manager Dennis G. Finlay released a June 4 letter to Ragosta in which he said the Town Council would not pay the library $2 million to buy its building on Putnam Pike in Greenville because “the town does not have sufficient funds.” Finlay said also that the town is about to borrow more than $10 million in bonds for roads reconstruction and acquisition of land for the Land Trust.

Christopher La Roux, director of the Greenville Public Library, said yesterday that the trustees had decided to downsize their proposal because “with this economy it’s going be hard to get people to approve it.”

He said the trustees originally had come up with a financing package that involved repaying the town for part of the cost by selling the current library building and land, collecting $750,000 through fundraising and using state reimbursement money.

But, he said, given the economy, the trustees found ways to reduce the size of the proposed building while ensuring it would still meet the library’s needs.

La Roux said it is possible the library might turn to the federal Farmers Home Administration for a loan. The FHA financed the current library, he said.

As for the overcrowding, he laughed and said, “It hasn’t gotten any better. It’s terrible. We have weeded out a lot of books. We have been getting rid of books we shouldn’t have, but we don’t have room. If another library has them and we can borrow, we are getting rid of them. Things are bad. It is very tough with interlibrary loans, because that is very labor intensive. We have had the staff working all out to borrow books. It is not a good situation.”