Special Interests v. Literacy

I have lived here long enough to know that, in Charleston County, logic does not always rule the day or the decision.  Budget cuts just a few years ago came down hard on the Charleston County Public Library, then one of the best library systems in the nation.  Since our current director blew in from one of the wealthiest counties in the country telling us he can save us money and move us forward (a song we in the South know well), our collection has been further decimated.

So when he and the library board proposed a building referendum, and the County Council put it on last year's ballot, I had enough doubt in the promises that were made to vote no.  But we in Charleston love our library, and that along with an impressive publicity campaign, won the referendum handily.

Now, on James Island, many in the community are in an uproar over the mishandling of the choice of location for the much needed larger branch library.  And this time, it looks like I can't blame Doug Henderson or the library board.

Here are the proposed locations, along with the current location of the James Island Library (apologies for my poor attempt to create this Google map): 



The shaded area is the outline of James Island.  The current location is surprisingly very much in the middle.  At 860 Folly Road is the large Bi-Lo Shopping Center, with a large long-vacant building; after a Dills Bluff location that was rated first came in with too high a price tag, the Bi-Lo lot is the site that the Library Board of Directors has recommended.  They based this recommendation on a number of factors, primarily cost and location.

But, wait, from out of nowhere, the Charleston County Council has stepped in and decided that they have a better plan.  An empty site on South Grimball Road, way down in the corner of James Island, is the location they are pushing.  Of course, by "they" I don't mean all the Council members, but "they" who are pushing are pushing as though they have more than a passing interest in this site.

But take a look at the map.  Those of you who spend time on Folly Road will know at a glance that this Grimball Road location will mean more time stuck in traffic, less convenience for both middle schools and the high school, and very likely too many people opting not to drop by with their kids or to browse the books and dvd's.  It is pretty much as out of the way as you can get and still be on James Island.

So what's the deal here?  Rumors are flying, which is only natural given the choice itself makes no sense.  The Post and Courier has noted that residents near the proposed Grimball Road site are concerned about congestion and the effect this library would have on the small community.  There is an historic cemetery adjacent to the property, a fragile marker of the past.  And then there is Folly Road traffic, which for many months of the year can be backed up to the Wal-Mart.

But if you owned some real estate in the area, and property values would rise with the building of the library, you might be likely to want that library built for reasons other than the good of the community.  We hope that isn't the case, but take another look at the map and come up with a reason why this location is the best for all of James Island.

Those who have been following this debate are divided as to what they think Council should do.  Sadly, some are afraid to push too hard for the Bi-Lo site because they believe Council has already made up its mind and no amount of reason will move it in another direction.  Leaving the existing bustling and beloved branch open along with the larger Grimball Road site is an option, although I can already hear the whining about the additional cost.

I concur with the Library's Board of Directors (something I haven't done for many years).  The Bi-Lo site is ideal for so many reasons.  It is on the main road with bus routes, at a traffic light, convenient to the Middle Schools and High School and it is fairly central to James Island.  The building has been vacant for some time and renovating it to build a library would certainly be an improvement and welcome to the community and shoppers.  The library board has already determined that it would be the most cost-effective option.

So what's the problem?  Are some members of County Council trying to confuse the issue by changing meeting agendas and introducing petitions that were gathered from selective members of the community?

The next step is the County Council meeting on Tuesday, June 16 at 6:30.  If you have a strong feeling about where your James Island Library should be built, start or sign a petition, write a letter to the editor or to the Council members (don't worry about who is "your" member, they are all making this decision that affects you and your family).  Show up at the meeting on the 16th, either to speak or to just show your support for James Island.

It may not be that special interests are controlling this important decision.  Perhaps they just believe that they know more about what library patrons on James Island need than the library board.  Or the residents.  Or even from the information you could get from looking at a map.

Books or Shiny Objects

I have a bumper sticker on my car that says,

Vote for Libraries

and I wonder these days if I should cover it over till November.  Because I don't want people to think that voting for the upcoming building referendum is the same thing as voting for your library.  Au contraire.

The library has been a heart-rending subject for me over the past several years, as many of you know, since the current director took over and began to run our wonderful Charleston County Public Library into the ground.  After years of cruel and insane state budget cuts, and the retirement of a long-time director and the death of her successor, I believe the board must have been feeling a bit shell-shocked.  And vulnerable to the candidate that told them what they wanted to hear:  "I can make your library better and save you money."  If that sounds familiar, it is because it is the song of the political south.  Long story short, they hired this guy who was once director of the hot-shot Louden County, Virginia, library system, over the acting director, whose smarts and dedication to our library should have made her the natural choice.

He demonstrated his snake-oil charm when he came in to visit the various branches.  He has the ability to make you think he is listening and agreeing, except if you actually think about it afterwards, you can't pinpoint a single point that you made that he agrees with (unless he agreed with it to begin with).  He has used that ability well since he has been here.  He hired a group of consultants and paid them to tell us exactly what he wanted them to; that is, that the library needed to downsize its collection.

In a manner befitting a tyrant, he instructed supervisors that their annual employee reviews were too generous and unacceptable, so that those who were already living far below a reasonable wage were now forced to endure reviews that were obsessively critical.  He instituted an employee chat site, which he could monitor, telling us employees that its purpose was really to bring us together as a group, or some such nonsense.

His coup de grace was the fulfillment of his promise to downsize our collection.  Books that had not been circulated in one year were to be tossed ("weeded").  Further, different branches did not "own" certain holdings based on their size and needs, but instead, books were kept at whichever branch they were returned.  Main Branch is no longer Main Branch in the sense that that is where you once went if you wanted to browse Charleston County's collection.  Smaller branches had to contend with overcrowded shelves and were encouraged to just keep weeding.

Books, music CD's, newspapers and periodicals are being cut, and we are being sold a not-ready-for-prime-time electronic collection in their place.  The bizarre "floating collection" in combination with the severe weeding policy has led to half filled shelves with multiple copies of lesser known newer books and the loss of older titles that are either not "hot" titles, or that just take up too much space.

So I am a fervent library supporter who cannot support what they are jokingly referring to as a library "expansion."

And neither is the Charleston Chamber of Commerce.  Ironically, we are opposing the referendum for totally different reasons, but they come down to the same thing.

It may be important to have more public computers, more meeting rooms and more programs, but in the end that is not what people will be willing to fund.  Without the books, the library will be a community center, and therein lies its vulnerability.  If we no longer need to keep our libraries open so the public can come in to browse and check out its collection, the funding is not going to be there for more and larger buildings.  Libraries experienced phenomenal growth throughout good times and bad (until recently) because they gave people the ability to expand their horizons.  As convenient as it is to place items on hold and then run in and pick them up, when we lose the desire to browse we are losing our ability to discover new things.  When you are reading your newspaper online, you aren't going into the reading room.

It is true that many people use the meeting rooms and computers and attend the programs.  But many more people do not.  We have virtually nothing to show for those big new buildings.  In fact, our virtual library is a shadow of what our once great libraries were.  So when it comes to funding, the public pressure just won't be there.  And that means that the funding we have will continue to erode.

The many thousands of volumes that we have lost in the past several years will not be replaced.  I will not vote for more shiny new buildings without a real commitment to return our library to a growing collection of books, wherein there is depth: older books, important books, classics, books on a range of subjects that may be hard to find.  Libraries were not built to house merely the popular, but the books that we might not ever read without our libraries.