Dear Editor,
Thank you for noting why public libraries are important to every
community. Books and reading are fundamental services that public
libraries provide.
Dear Editor,
Thank you for noting why public libraries are important to every community. Books and reading are fundamental services that public libraries provide. Studies have shown that from birth through 4th grade, children are learning to read and after 4th grade children are reading to learn. Libraries play a key role in creating successful readers with story-time programs for infants and toddlers and author events for teens and adults. We can’t have a literate, thinking society without readers.
One of the driving forces behind applying for a Proposition 81 grant is to be able to put money into library programs that a community simply could not afford. With a grant covering 65 percent of the project construction costs, the grant applicant can take that money saved and plow it back into new and expanded community library programs.
Thus, communities that win grants, not only get a new or renovated building, but they get the wonderful literacy, homework, Internet research and reading and reference and other great programs that let kids, community college students, business people, parents, seniors and more find out so much about the world around them and how they can live in that world better.
It’s perfectly okay to use a form of deficit financing to build public libraries. The library we build today and visit with our children will be the same library that our children will take their children to in 20 years. So, it is completely fair to suggest that you and I will pay for some of those library costs, and that our children, as adults will pay for some of those library costs. That is the philosophy that all of this state’s great public works were built on. If we were to have to wait until money may become available to construct a library on a pay as you go basis, 10, 15, 20 years from now, the amount of new library we buy or build with a dollar then will be a whole lot less than what we buy if we build today because of the effects of inflation.
You mentioned what I believe to be an inaccurate and inflammatory statement about access to the Internet. Libraries offer high-speed Internet access, because we do care about the education and well-being of children and people of all ages and because there are still many people who don’t own computers or have an Internet connection and in order to compete in today’s society, everyone needs these skills.
Your editorial on Proposition 81 got it right when it stated that Gilroy is likely to qualify for a grant, which will pay for most of the construction of a sorely needed larger new library. Writers, readers and lovers of libraries should care about Proposition 81, the California Reading and Literacy Improvement and Library Construction Bond Act of 2006 when voting in the June 6 election.
Melinda Cervantes, Director,
Santa Clara County Library
