Library cuts put region’s history at risk
If you want to bring public attention to a $6.7 million city-budget shortfall, put an institution like the beloved Tacoma Public Library’s Northwest Room on the chopping block and start sharpening the knives.
Last month the city’s budget officer sent Tacoma Public Library Director Susan Odencrantz a memo saying the 2017-18 budget would require a 4 percent cut from libraries, amounting to $903,318.
Biennial budget cuts are nothing new to Odencrantz. Previous city mandates have caused her to raid trust funds, eliminate staff positions, cut service hours and eliminate branches.
In an interview this week, Odencrantz said she’d hoped she could increase services over the next two years; instead, the city gave her five business days to come up with new proposed cuts.
The city directive included a caveat: Library cuts should avoid impacting low-income areas. The last two library closures did not meet that criteria. In 2011, the city shut down the Swan Creek branch on Portland Avenue and the MLK branch in the Hilltop neighborhood.
Five years later, Odencrantz is forced again to present the library board with a dilemma that would make King Solomon wince.
After some deliberation, she and the board offered up either The Northwest Room, located in the main branch downtown, or the Kobetich Library in Brown’s Point.
Considered a mid-size branch, Kobetich has a monthly door count of about 6,000 people. Closing it would mean patrons would visit a Federal Way library and hope the reciprocal arrangement offered by King County remains in place.
The city saves $852,000 by closing Kobetich, but it would be wrong to believe the closure wouldn’t hurt lower-income families. The branch is somewhat isolated from the city, and patrons who once relied on it for Internet access would be cut off.
The other half of this Sophie’s Choice equation is to close the treasured Northwest Room. Eliminating this local institution would save the city $621,000 over two years, but the idea is unthinkable for many residents.
Housed in the original 1903 Carnegie building, the Northwest Room has been chronicling Pacific Northwest culture since the 1880s. The room’s repository includes early to current newspapers, genealogy and record indexes, maps, photos, manuscripts and much more.
Inside those walls is the story of us, filled with accounts about the people, places and events that shaped our region’s history. The mere suggestion of closing it is like stomping through sacred territory wearing dirty boots.
Appreciative of the painstaking work produced by generations of librarians, the people of Tacoma will not let the Northwest Room go down without a fight. A petition started by Friends of Tacoma Public Library is circulating through social media.
The problem with libraries is they’re not sexy. There’s no visible bang for your buck when it comes to funding them. They don’t come riding into town on two slick rails, ready to take us to Tomorrowland. But to believe they don’t protect and serve or they won’t transport us into the future is dangerously short-sighted.
Nothing is set in stone as far as these proposals go. City Manager T.C. Broadnax will decide which cuts to include in the proposed budget he presents to the City Council and the public this fall, but painful cuts will be made.
Here’s hoping that among the thousands of news articles archived in the Northwest Room, the last one won’t read: “City Council closes budget gap: Northwest Room will go dark.”
This story was originally published June 29, 2016 at 3:41 PM with the headline "Library cuts put region’s history at risk."