One Step Forward - July 2004

The Ithaca Journal
July 22, 2004
Gary Woloszyn, President, Tompkins County Public Library Board of Trustees

We hope that you know about some of the exciting activities at the Tompkins County Public Library. Our Cornell/Community Collaboration featuring The Trial, by Franz Kafka, is off to a great start. Our new lap top lab, supplied through a generous grant from Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, enables the library to teach basic information searching skills. And we now have summer Saturday hours!

Hundreds of patrons took advantage of our new summer schedule to come to the library on Saturday! It was great to see the cross section of our community make use of one of the most prized resources of our free society: public information for all.

Saturday's patrons matched our county's diversity-young and old, wealthy and not so well off, people from all corners of the county-who are searching for the right book, the best web site, or that newly released DVD.

Summer Saturdays have been a major topic of conversation among library users over the past few years. Contractual agreements were worked out between the staff and the trustees to try to mirror the needs of the community we serve, with the needs of our employees. So we were finally able to open as the public demanded, and now, everything is rosy, right?

Not quite. 2004 staffing of our library is at a 4- year low, compared to scheduled hours in our old library on Cayuga Street, which the community had outgrown. The lack of adequate staff to meet community demands creates a ripple effect in that we are unable to provide good service to our customers which in turn causes stress on our remaining employees.

Proper staffing is only part of the picture. The acquisitions budget is 43% less than it was a year ago, and is entirely dependant upon private donations and support from the Friends of the Library. Our public money from the county and the state is spent on keeping the library open the state mandated minimum number of hours per week.

What will 2005 and beyond bring? The future remains cloudy. Libraries throughout the state have been caught in a squeeze between federal, state and county tax dollar allocations. There is still much work to do to stabilize our library's fragile support. The libraries in New York State who have been able to secure sufficient and stable funding have done so by creating library districts, which allow the public an opportunity to set a tax rate for support of library services. Another solution has been to resort to a special resolution referendum in which the voters mandate a certain level of financial support for the library.

Our Alternative Funding Committee, which consists of a group of dedicated volunteers, trustees and library staff, has been steadfastly exploring all options. They have had help and advice from many of our local and state elected officials, but after two years of meetings, written proposals, counter proposals and road trips to Albany, we have not made clear progress toward stable funding which guarantees a library that meets the demands of our community.

Until a viable alternative to stabilizing library support is found, we continue to be dependant upon the present system of county tax support, and the generous support of organizations and individuals.

Ultimately, a community must decide what it wants for itself and future generations, what level of commitment they are willing to make and communicate that to officials at all levels of government. To express your opinion about the Tompkins County Public Library, contact your county legislator (http://www.tompkins-%20co.org/legislature/members/). Or you may e-mail Library Director Janet Steiner: jsteiner@tcpl.org.