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Salinas Moves Ahead with Plan to Restore Library HoursCheers filled the Salinas, California, city council chambers May 2 after lawmakers approved the appropriation of some $3.6 million to the city’s three libraries to restore their 117-hour service week in summer 2007, according to the May 3 Monterey Herald. “Tonight we’re seeing the coming together of the community,” council member Jyl Lutes remarked. “I never thought I’d be quoting Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, but what a long, strange trip it’s been.”The vote is the culmination of a years-long struggle to save the system after a September 2004 city council decision almost shuttered it to close a $9.2-million deficit. A grassroots fundraising campaign, whose organizers brainstormed with a first-ever consultative delegation from the American Library Association in February, kept the doors open—at first for 33 hours a week and beginning this spring for 69. The additional funds are part of an anticipated $10 million the city will realize in FY 2007 from a half-cent sales-tax hike that voters okayed in November 2005. Measure V funds will also buoy the budgets of the police, fire, parks and recreation, development and engineering, city maintenance, administration, and legal departments. Although the additional tax will go into effect July 1, budget makers are unable to expend funds from the city’s cash-strapped coffers until it has been collected. Council member Roberto Ocampo took an even more conservative fiscal view. “What happens in 10 years when the money goes away? What happens to the library?” he asked. “Obviously there’s planning that needs to take place.” Posted May 5, 2006. |
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