Our next/44th President of The United States of America
Tom Tancredo for President 2008: “Our Last and Only Hope to Save AMERICA”
Posted on 12/30/2004 4:07:54 PM PST by nanak
If you think Vancouver libraries took a hit this year, get this: The home town of the Nobel Prize-winning author of "Cannery Row" and "Of Mice and Men" is shutting down its libraries. And it isn't because no one lives there anymore.
John Steinbeck's Salinas, Calif., near Monterey, has seen rapid growth and now boasts a population of 150,000. The city is experiencing many of the same budget woes as other city and state governments, including rising health care costs. Budget shortfalls and failed money requests in Salinas have brought $8 million in budget cuts this year and the city plans to make $8 million more.
Unique to Salinas is a high population of farmworkers and immigrants, many of which are assumed to be illegally in the country. Illegal immigrants bring added tax burdens and must be part of Salinas' broke status.
Voters there also keep turning down money requests. The city's plea for a half-cent raise in its sales tax would have kept libraries open and raised millions for other services. But the Nov. 2 ballot measure failed. So did a measure that would have raised utility rates for 61 larger businesses. That stunned people. The measure was placed on the ballot by the business community in an effort to help the city budget. And so it is that the town's three-branch, 112-year-old library system that predates Steinbeck (born in Salinas in 1902) will close.
Library renovations needed here
Vancouver's library troubles pale in comparison to Salinas' sadness. But last spring voters turned down a $48 million measure that would have increased people's property taxes. The bond issue would have renovated the Fort Vancouver Regional Library system's busy main library on E. Mill Plain Blvd. It also would have paid for a bigger Cascade Park branch. If you've been to it, you know how ridiculously tiny it is, even for a library in the information age.
The library board believes it drew the boundary for the tax increase too large and might come back to voters in 2005 with another request that targets those living closer to branches that would be enhanced. Even then, voting stats show that the smaller boundary might still have the library coming up slightly short of the needed 60 percent approval. And because the tax increase would affect fewer people, the amount of money the library would be asking of residents could be higher or the renovation and rebuilding plans scaled back. Those drawbacks could actually nullify any potential gain in "yes" votes.
The closings in Salinas are sparking conversation among a larger crowd than closings elsewhere would because Salinas is the town that spawned Steinbeck. But the message whenever libraries close is the same: Libraries are a public amenity and they can be lost to higher government priorities.
This means library boards, including Fort Vancouver's, should do all they can to reach out to the populations they serve. Our library system already has stellar service and convenient check-out policies. But it could do better by avoiding unnecessary battles over community standards in which the library board appears to lack common sense. Carrying pornographic magazines and resisting maximum child-safety measures for Internet use continue to hurt our libraries. To gather the support of as many taxpayers as possible, the board needs to make amends.
I hope the library regains the confidence of its patrons (overall, it deserves it) and that the next funding measure it floats passes. Libraries are valuable even to those who don't use them. They are more than a cheap way to read books and provide story time for kids. Like schools, they provide a way for citizens (especially those without computers or book-store money) to get ahead and become better contributors to the local economy. Until more money is approved, donations are always accepted.
And if a wealthy cadre of Steinbeck lovers feels inclined to save Salinas by footing the libraries' $3.2 million yearly operating budget, checks can be sent to the city memorialized by Steinbeck in his 1952 novel, "East of Eden."
Eden never looked so shabby. And right now, the city's decision is receiving only sour grapes and wrath from critics. Those won't pay the bills.
Ping.
Eden never looked so shabby...
Before the reporter decided to use Steinbeck as the pivot for her storyline, she really should've known a little more about his books.
It is, indeed, Salinas that is "East of Eden" -- literally. Because Eden itself, of course, was Monterey.
Coming to a town near you.
>>Voters there also keep turning down money requests. The city's plea for a half-cent raise in its sales tax would have kept libraries open and raised millions for other services. <<
Man, talk about STINGY!! HIP HIP HURRAH!!
The American voters is finally seeing what the cost of illegals is to our way of life.
Six months ago I actually didn't think it was possible the voters would ever open their eyes wide enough to understand that the time a teacher spends with the illegal child is time taken away from our children.
The time a doctor spends treating an illegal who doesn't have the resources to pay the bill results in poor medical care for the ones do pay their bills.
The time a police officer spends investigating or arresting an illegal is time they don't have to patrol our neighborhoods.
On and on and on
Our next/44th President of The United States of America
Tom Tancredo for President 2008: “Our Last and Only Hope to Save AMERICA”
I posted an article about this several days ago - but you definitely have found the right angle.
It is 100% an illegal immigration problem.
Pity...
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out if you raise taxes on business they'll just raise prices to cover the tax or lay people off.
Good for them.
If illegals continue voting, it might just go the other way.
Instead of tackling the real issue, pass the buck.
the people in Salinas have spoken.
Hey, that's my line.(^:
I haven't read Steinbeck in quite some time. If I remember correctly, he was something of a Socialist. Ironic how the Socialistic tendencies of these California towns to 'spread the wealth' from those who work, earn, and have to those who come and take and don't return once again proves how the basic precepts of Socialism are based upon erroneous assumptions.
Oops my bad! LOL
And, like a damn fine musician -- Willie Nelson -- Steinbeck's politics probably lapsed into an unthinking, reflexive New Deal Democrat vein.
But I really don't believe his politics informed his writing in any important way. Chapter 5 of "The Grapes of Wrath" is a powerful indictment of The Bank, certainly. But, at the same time, it was a realistic portrayal of how the Joads (and others in the same circumstances) had to have felt at the time.
I'll honor Steinbeck as my favorite American author -- despite being a conservative and being from Oklahoma (where his books were not welcome in the library as I was growing up). And forgive him his New Deal liberalism because, foremost, he was an insightful observer of the human condition and a helluva writer.
Only you, Nanak,(#1 Tancredo supporter on FR) could misrepresent the fact that the voting populace in a city(Salinas, CA) has finally put it's foot down against a bloated beaucracy and turn it into an ugly race baiting thread.
There are few public libraries or other public amenities, such as parks in the third world. Get used to it folks.
Huh Mexico City's premier park(Chapultepec Park) is 2 and 1/2 times bigger(2000 acres) than NYC's Central Park(800 acres).
Well it is much more important to allow illegal aliens to flood into our country rather than having a place where our kids can learn and research. /s
Futhering the law-breaking of illegals, only prolongs their countries' necessary legal and financial reforms, and keeps them from their families. It is not only wrong, it is harmful to them.
Chapultepec Park is an enormous green area in the middle of all the hustle and bustle of this fast paced city. This park, the city's largest covering over 2000 acres, contains three of the city's most important museums, an amusement park with an old style wooden roller coaster, the only genuine castle in North America, Mexico's largest zoo and the residence of the president of Mexico, Los Pinos. For water lovers there are lakes with paddleboats, also an aquatic park with water slides, tunnels and a wave pool. Papalote Museo del Niño is a hands-on children's museum with an IMAX big screen theatre.
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