Officials Vow Strapped Oregon System Will Rise AgainDire financial straits have forced Jackson County, Oregon, commissioners to schedule April 6 as the last date of operation for the entire 15-branch library system. “It almost has to be a crisis before there is a solution,” remarked library advisory committee member Jim Fety at a January 25 county commission meeting, noting that a five-year operations levy on the November 7 ballot fell 9% short of the votes needed to keep the library’s $8-million annual budget afloat. “Everybody in this room wants the library system we have,” Jackson County Commission member Jack Walker asserted, the January 26 Medford Mail Tribune reported.
The fiscal crisis, which has created a $23-million deficit in the overall county budget, arose because in December Congress did not reauthorize the 98-year-old Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act, which provides federal assistance to communities whose tax receipts rely on the logging industry. In 2006, Oregon received $273 million to compensate for decreased logging on its federal land. The shortfall—which would also reduce the number of jail cells available to the sheriff’s department, cut road-maintenance funds by $4 million, and slash the county government payroll by 10%—eliminates the library budget altogether because the provision of library service is not mandated by state law.
Officials at several levels are seeking solutions. Bills were introduced in January in both the U.S. House and Senate seeking a seven-year reinstatement of the legislation. Meantime, Jackson County commissioners are expected to decide by mid-February whether to place a library levy on the May ballot, which would need a double majority vote to pass—a turnout of 50% of eligible voters, 50% of which approve the measure—because the referendum would be held between general elections.
Despite the hurdles, Jackson County Commissioner C. W. Smith vowed in the Mail Tribune that budget-makers were committed to helping the library “find a way to get back to square one” financially.
Posted January 26, 2007.
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