A few weeks ago I wrote about the Timberland Regional Library’s handling of some pretty serious budget issues. In it, I explained that I thought the process, including the alleged ordering of some affected library employees who knew what was being discussed to keep quiet, was a bad idea.
I still do.
In my column I also wrote that cuts or even closures might be necessary given the $700,000 deficit but honest open discussion and public input should have happened.
Sometime around the holidays, a board member was kind enough to call and talk to me, mostly clarifying it wasn’t the board proposing to close libraries, but a plan proposed by staff members. The board, when they became aware of it, shut that idea down.
My rub with the whole thing wasn’t what they planned to do, but how they planned in secret to do it. I didn’t get the impression he was happy with the process or the proposed solution either. But a $700,000 deficit will require changes.
In a Jan 5 Chronicle story under the headline “County Leaders Raise Concerns Over Proposed Winlock, Salkum Library Changes,” leaders from around the county weighed in about some of Timberland staff-proposed ideas to address the deficit.
From the story, none of the leaders seemed happy with any changes now being discussed as topics for upcoming public meetings.
Full disclosure — I haven’t been a public library fan since the days of trying to get them to filter porn off the public library computers. The resistance to that by library staff and the board at the time really soured me. I haven’t been in any public library for years or used their services and I’m struggling to understand the depth of the emotional attachment to them in today’s world.
Still, with this kind of deficit, changes are going to be necessary. This time around, in public, the suggestions from staff for discussion in public meetings are also unpopular.
I read through the article a couple of times looking for something besides “no” from any of the leaders in the room and didn’t find anything. In fact, the move I would have thought very prudent given the financial situation they are facing — not filling a vacant position — seemed to upset at least one commissioner.
With a deficit like this I would have thought reducing hours, sharing managers, cutting personnel hours/costs, and yes, closing branches would all have to be on the table. Real leaders recognize problems and try to deal with them, and sometimes it is unpopular. This may be one of those times.
It’s not rocket science that this kind of shortfall can’t be made up by recycling paperclips and these leaders know (or certainly should have known) this too.
The county commissioners especially should understand the challenges facing Timberland given the recent and painful cuts to senior programs they have tried to implement and their dependence on reserves to keep from other and more painful cuts, for now.
I don’t know if Timberland has reserves, but deficit spending only delays the inevitable anyway.
Timberland has a real problem and it will require some kind of changes, which may not be popular. But after reading the article, here is what I took from what I read about the meeting; in a room full of “leaders,” not a single constructive solution by any of them to the library problem was reported.
Instead, it seemed to me the meeting sounded more like a gripe session about the ideas to be discussed. I’d like to think, however, these leaders discussed thoughtful ideas to solve this $700,000 library problem, but for some reason, none of those ideas made it into the article.
I’d like to think that because that’s what “leaders” would have been doing.
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John McCroskey was Lewis County sheriff from 1995 to 2005. He lives outside Chehalis, and can be contacted at musingsonthemiddlefork@yahoo.com.
