Arkansas Library Aid Gets
11th-Hour Reprieve
At its June 10 meeting, the Arkansas Board of Education backed away from an earlier proposal to eliminate all state aid to libraries for FY 2003. Ultimately, the board allotted $500,000 in its finalized budget—significantly less than the $2 million Arkansas libraries received in FY 2002.
“The librarians had asked [the board] to reconsider, and a lot of the board members felt they should do something,” Department of Education Director Ray Simon said in the June 11 Conway Log Cabin Democrat, referring to a fax alert State Librarian Jack Mulkey sent to public librarians at the end of May about the impending fiscal crisis. “All of the librarians felt that if there was anything left in that line item, we could build on it,” Faulkner–Van Buren County Library Director Ruth Voss told the Democrat.
Officials appropriated the $500,000 by moving $250,000 apiece from funds earmarked for transportation aid and technological enhancements.
Posted June 17, 2002.
|
