Libraries – Waste Of Money. Or Not.

Tax Revolt Takes Aim at a County’s Libraries

ETTLE FALLS, Wash., Aug. 15 – One library doubles as a laundry room, where a person can clean a month of dirty clothes and pick up a Churchill biography in a single stop. Another shares a roof with a state liquor store – “books ‘n’ booze,” people call it in jest….

…A group of antitax crusaders are trying to shutter them, in an effort that the American Library Association says may be the first aimed at dissolving an entire county library system by referendum. In the last decade, parts of the rural West have had tax revolts against schools, public transportation and new parks. Now comes the first tax revolt against books.

Leaders of the campaign to eliminate the Stevens County Rural Library District say they are tired of paying property taxes for a service that helps people largely in the most out-of-the-way crannies, where a majority of the county’s libraries lie. Besides, they say, rural libraries are increasingly obsolete, given the Internet, video outlets and discount bookstores…

…”With all the property I own, I’m probably paying up to $500 in taxes for the library, and that’s just $500 wasted on something we don’t need,” said one supporter of the measure, Dave Sitler, a real estate agent.

Mr. Sitler, a member of the American Heritage Party, which calls for an end to all property taxes and for a government based on biblical tenets, also complains that the head librarian’s annual salary of $51,000 is too high. “The salaries they pay those librarians, with health benefits and all that, it adds up,” he said.

Mr Sitler, you are scum. Firstly, the idea of libraries with laundrettes and booze shops in them is brilliant in the first place. Take your washing in, have a beer, read a book… great. Secondly, the people who benefit most from libraries (and I know this is really obvious) are the ones who can’t afford to buy their own books or use the internet. And libraries have their own internet access anyway. So tell me, is this a “fuck the poor, I don’t care about them” move by any chance? I think it might be. Why can’t some people see that having an educated, literate populace is a good thing for everyone? Mr Sitler bitches about paying $500 a year on the immense amount of property he apparently owns. Doesn’t he realise that, if people are educated, they might actually be able to afford to live in his houses?

And that’s quite apart from the overwhelming ethical argument.

Regan Robinson, the district library director, hopes that the campaign qualifies for the fall ballot, so that the county can have vigorous debate on the merits of taxation and public services.

“We’re seeing a disconnect in our society,” Ms. Robinson said. “People don’t understand that you need tax money to pay for the public good. I’d like to see someone face the women I see every day with three kids and a stack of books and tell them they can’t have a library anymore.”

I’ve heard so many leading intellectuals who happened to come from immigrant families say that public libraries were what took them out of the ghettoes and into the world. Do people really want to stop this?

Well, yes, it appears they do. If I was World Dictator there’d be libraries in every town and village. (This would be economically feasible if I was World Dictator, since I wouldn’t have to spend anything on defence, since there wouldn’t be any outside threatening force… except for those aliens, of course.)

N.B. Original article is NY Times so you will have to register (free) to read it. Spotted by toddius.