Posted May 26, 2003.
Determined Officials Restore Wichita’s Joint-Use Facility
The public outcry against the abrupt cancellation of a 25-year-old joint-use agreement between Wichita (Kans.) Public Library and the Colvin Elementary School library has resulted in a May 22 decision to reopen the Planeview branch to the public immediately. Officials made the announcement as they emerged from a meeting at which School Superintendent Winston Brooks offered to provide staffing and pay utilities in exchange for WPL continuing to make its books available to Colvin schoolchildren as well as the public. Noting that the agreement had been severed only because the city was suffering a fiscal shortfall, city council member Bob Martz replied, “Why don’t we say we have an open library as of today?”
Although the issues were over municipal funding, Mayor Carlos Mayans had all along opposed closure of the collection to the public. Characterizing the shuttering as “contrary to what this country is all about,” Mayans said in the May 23 Wichita Eagle, “The issue is children and [adult] literacy. These are not competing missions.”
Also declaring his elation at the reopening was Sedgwick County Commissioner Ben Sciortino, who called on WPL to better serve the neighborhood’s significant number of Spanish- and Vietnamese-speakers by adding books in those languages.
Posted May 26, 2003.