Without Libraries, City Is Truly Poor

Never let it be said that public libraries are a luxury. Especially in a city like Spokane, with its many low-income families, elderly persons and technological have-nots.

And yet, partly as a result of decisions it made during the past year, the Spokane City Council has created a financial crisis that could force it to curtail library hours severely. Again.

This should outrage voters, who agreed in 1990 to raise their taxes so the city could construct a first-class collection of library buildings and fill these marvelous new libraries with books and technology.

What good is a new, $35 million library system if it’s closed when your family needs to use it?

And what kind of future does a city have, if its underprivileged children are denied the books essential to literacy and employment? How can technological have-nots get Internet access, without libraries? How can fixed-income elderly folk get reading materials? How can job applicants research employment opportunities? Without libraries, a city is truly poor.

It’s wrong to demagogue against crime and potholes, those perennial priorities of city budgeting, when a city’s most precious human capital is being short-changed.

This fall, budget writers at City Hall are struggling to draft a plan for 2001. The City Council’s assumptions, so far, leave the library system with the same dollar amount for 2001 that it had in 2000.

But labor contracts obligate the city to raise salaries, making it more expensive to operate libraries in 2001 than it was this year. In addition, books get more expensive each year and the libraries’ utility costs may rise steeply.

Bottom line: Merely to continue current service levels, the libraries will need an additional $500,000 next year.

The additional money isn’t there.

In fact, the city’s budget drafts are now almost $3 million in the red, meaning the libraries’ plight could get worse, not better, by the time a final budget is approved.

Meanwhile, library officials are in agony at the very real possibility they’ll have to cut services by $500,000 next year. To put that in perspective, it costs $300,000 to run one branch library for a year. The city has five branch libraries, plus the downtown library.

The only apparent choice, says library director Aubrey George, is to slash library hours. The system could close one branch entirely and slash hours at another, or it could distribute the cuts, closing all libraries by another day or more each week.

Which libraries should be closed? East Side, where need is greatest? No way. South Hill or Shadle, where circulation is highest? Get ready for the screams of protest.

How did the city get in this jam? Last year, voters repealed the motor vehicle excise tax, cutting city revenues. And they elected a new council majority whose members went on an expensive litigation spree, savaged the city’s credit rating and canceled a bridge project in a way that created a big debt to federal government.

No easy solutions are in sight. All the public can hope for is a City Council with the vision to make libraries a higher priority than police, fire protection and potholes. Don’t hold your breath.

For Spokane to emerge from this dark tunnel, however, we’ll have to make it a top priority to fund libraries, with a disciplined commitment equal to the commitment that sustains our parks.