Commentary 9-8-16

Vote to support libraries
The free public library lives at the center of what makes America great. It is, simply, one of the best things a government can throw money at. It not only makes better citizens, it makes citizens; it informs and forms them, instilling civic virtue and discernment. The library makes people better humans, more informed voters, more empathetic, smarter, better lovers, better social animals and more acutely aware of the vast complex interdependent array of networks that sustain and nourish civilization.
I have seen immigrants learn English at the library. I have seen smart adults who lacked the ability to read, come out from behind their clever ruse and learn to read and write at the library. And I’ve seen thousands of children begin a lifelong love affair with books and reading at the library. I have helped countless people repair their plumbing, fix their cars, sell their cars, build a retaining wall, build a yurt, a tiny house, a geodesic dome, a craftsman cottage, tree houses, patios, gazebos, half timbered Elizabethan houses.
I have gotten recipes for cakes, salads, classic French and Novo Pakistani, food for two or one or 50. I have helped people try to repair their marriages, get divorced, find their birth parents, discover their genealogy, contact their congressman, pimp their resume, evict their tenant, defy their landlord. I got a call on the desk at the Santa Rosa Library from an underage couple on Highway 80 to Reno, asking what they needed in the way of proof to get married. Most people come for a weekly dose of fiction, audiobook, nonfiction, DVDs, or some material to brighten their lives.
What I love about libraries is that they are all tradition and disruptive change. Libraries and America – both change agents – grew up together. Benjamin Franklin started a subscription library in Philly in 1731, the Library Company of Philadelphia. The American Free Public Library movement grew up with young republic. Women were a big part. Women’s Improvement Clubs sponsored libraries, and then the Free Public movement aligned and shared membership with a number of early 19th Century woman-based agents of change: the women’s suffrage movement, the free public school movement, the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
Peterborough, New Hampshire voted at a town meeting to devote tax dollars to fund a public library, a free public library in 1833. Boston Public, one of the great libraries of the world has claimed the title of first free public in the U.S. in 1852, but I think plucky Peterborough has a 19 year jump on Boston.
The movement to build libraries in every town got a great push forward with Andrew Carnegie, who between 1890 and 1920 built 2,500 libraries through the Carnegie Foundation, including four right here in Sonoma County. Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, Sonoma and Petaluma got wonderful state-of-the-art-libraries built for free. All a town had to do was give the land, fill it with books and provide professional librarians.
The guy who tore down the Santa Rosa Carnegie Library and built the library that stands there today, David Sabsay, totally got the concept of disruptive change, and there should be a statue to this giant of a man who stood about five-two. He started as Santa Rosa City Librarian in 1958 and then had the city join the county library, and then one by one got every other city in the county to join the system and come up with the Joint Powers Agreement (JPA), a far seeing document that governs the library to this day.
He got every city to give up its little jewel of a library because it made sense. In other counties there are the city libraries where the tax base and those who love libraries are, and there is the county, the unincorporated land, where the tax base sucks and it is tough to get people excited about libraries. In other counties, rich cities like Mill Valley, Beverly Hills and Saint Helena build good libraries, and the county library struggles to serve the underserved. Sabsay created a level playing field and shared the wealth, and that is why we need a sales tax.
Not just because libraries are great and make better people, but because it’s time. We started with a library built for its time. The JPA started was adopted in 1970. Times have changed. Forty-six years and Sonoma County has grown from a cow county to a tourist mecca and a retirement destination for the rich. And we have not upped the ante for our libraries. We need a funding base that matches heritage and gives us a shot at our potential. Vote Yes on Measure Y.
– Bo Simons is a retired librarian