tennessean.com Reports Maury County stands to lose 30,000 state-owned books from its libraries if County Executive Jim Bailey fails to sign a state-required agreement regarding funding for the Spring Hill Library.
The agreement pledges that this year’s library funding will be equal to or greater than last year’s.
A sad state of affairs in TN
As a librarian working in TN, I find this very depressing. The state budget crisis is finally trickling down to the local level. The inability of state and local government to raise revenues or open any reasonably debate on tax reform is causing countys to cut funding wherever they can. The easiest target? Public libraries. Unfortunately, the county council’s aren’t seeing the whole issue. They pay the state (as in Dickson Countys case) $50,000 but receive almost 10 times that in materials, training, and support. For fiscally struggling counties, I think that is quite a steal.
As in the case of Dickson County, who were saved by a private donation, they have only come up with a temporary solution. Next year, this issue will crop up again unless the counties and the state can get some new agreement worked out.
I’m curious, does anyone out there know of any similar agreements between state library’s and individual public systems? Are they having similar troubles?