Good Steps Forward in Oakland

On Tuesday, June 30th, the Oakland (CA) City Council voted to approve a 2-year  (FY2015-17 budget) that includes a new half a million dollars to begin restoring library hours.

We're very proud of the work the Oakland Library Advisory Commission has done over the last 2 years to get to this point. It's new revenue for the library and helps improve the 'maintenance of effort' by the city. We're glad to have played a part in supporting them in 2013 and 2014. And we're committed to helping them secure the funding their librarians need to continue to improve services and staffing at this great library.

From the Commission's Facebook announcement:

The Oakland City Council voted Tuesday to approve the FY2015-17 budget, including $500,000 to begin restoring library hours cut during the recession. Thanks once again to Council Members Dan Kalb and Annie Campbell-Washington for including the library in their budget priorities, and to Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney for including the $500K in her draft budget AND for her zero-hour, pro-library tweets. Finally, thanks to the library advocates – you know who you are! – who went to meetings, sent emails, signed up to speak at council meetings, and generally kept the library on the Council’s radar when it counted. Before the $500K appeared, Council also helped fill a projected $3.5 million budget gap that would have been catastrophic for the library – and advocates played a role in that! Oakland Public Library is the best, and so are its supporters!

Go put a Like on it. We sure did.