Reopening the Libraries

Saturday will mark a year since our county libraries started closing their doors.  They were supposed to shut after voters rejected the library levy in Nov '06.  However, the commissioners waited a few months until the voters rejected the public safety levy. 

A short time later, despite clear voter feedback and continuing fiscal concerns, two of our three commissioners went ahead and promised some money to vocal library supporters.  If volunteers could raise $300,000 and come up with a plan to operate the libraries for 3-5 years, the commissioners would match that $300,000 ($75,000 of it from the library trust fund..previous blog here).

Here we are almost nine months later, and the non-profit Josephine County Libraries Inc. has raised about $120,000, almost a third of that in pledges and in-kind goods and services.  So to draw attention to their effort...    

Josephine Community Libraries Inc. will hold a Remember the Libraries memorial service at 11:30 a.m. Saturday. Mourners will gather outside the Growers' Market for a funeral march past the Grants Pass Library to the steps of the Josephine County Courthouse. At the courthouse, participants will celebrate the life of the library with stories and songs.

Know your audience--leave the pretentious crap to Ashland.  Same goes for..........don't get me started about how library advocates have hurt their cause in recent years.   

The organization is also collecting stories from community members about the impact libraries, open and closed, have had on their lives.

"Anniversaries are always a time to reflect," said Josephine Community Libraries volunteer Robin Elliott. "And on this anniversary in particular, one year of a shuttered library, we thought it would be appropriate to record and share the powerful stories we hear of how much people love and miss their libraries."

Stories will be saved in the organization's archives and used to illustrate the importance of libraries to future generations. They may also be reprinted in fundraising and promotional materials. Authors agree to permit Josephine Community Libraries to reproduce and disseminate submissions in print or electronically.

It would help to hear from people who need the libraries and have been hurt by their loss. It's harder to get folks to open their wallets when they can't see much in the way of tangible, measurable benefits from having libraries.    

Obviously, it doesn't help that the loss of timber funds is cutting deeply into the most basic of county services, like policing and jails.  The lead article in the DC today was "Public Safety Levy Moves Closer to Ballot."  It's still looking like we'll be voting upon a two-tier system, modeled after what Deschutes County has. 

District 1 is a countywide district that pays for jail operations, courthouse security, emergency disaster planning, search and rescue and other services that are countywide in nature.

District 2 consists of only the unincorporated areas of the county and provides funding for rural sheriff's patrol, investigation, traffic teams and other services. City residents receive those services from their city police department.

Sure seems like a logical approach.  Now if we knew how much money they'll be asking for. 

If we approve dedicated funding for public safety, you know the county will take the discretionary money it's been giving the sheriff's office and spend it elsewhere.  The only question is what percentage of our tax increase would actually go towards public safety.  The rest...maybe that's how our libraries are reopened.