Lib Politics Rodeo June 24, 2014

Welcome to the Lib Politics Rodeo. Every Tuesday we will round up the previous week’s news on library politics and highlight some of the things that we are following or reading. Here’s what we have in our lassos this week…

This week the Rodeo was compiled and written with the help of our intern Rachel Korman.

News

On June 16, Pomona (CA) City Council members unanimously voted to put a parcel tax measure on the November ballot that will generate $1.7 million annually for the Pomona Public Library. Pomona faced a huge set back when their core parcel tax was defeated in 2012. They are currently an all volunteer library. Pomona is a campaign we are supporting in 2014. Earlier this year we issued a $5,000 funding challenge and now that this is on the ballot we can begin to work with the vote yes committee on their campaign. Thank you for your donations.

June 16 also saw a successful outcome for the Park Ridge Public Library (IL). In the May 27th Rodeo, we reported that the Park Ridge alderman would decide on whether or not a referendum to increase property taxes measure for the Park Ridge Public Library would appear on the November ballot. City alderman voted 6-1 in favor of the referendum being put on the ballot.

In the June 4th Rodeo, we reported that Wareham (MA) was running a “must win” campaign for Proposition 2 ½ to secure $4.5 million to fund town and school operating expenses of which the library was a part of. We are sad to report that on June 16th, Wareham voters rejected the proposition override by a margin of more than two-to-one. This outcome has left the future of the library and its ability to serve patrons uncertain- staff will be let go, hours will be cut, and services will be greatnly impacted as the library struggles to make use of the revenue they can receive from property taxes within the confines of the new balanced budget, which equates to less than half of the funding they received from the year before.

Eastern Shore Public Library (VA) officials have withdrawn their request from the county for $3.5 million for a new library and have asked the Accomack County Board of Supervisors to cancel their vote regarding a referendum for said funding. Back in May, the Board of Supervisors voted to hold a referendum in November to ask voters for this funding. However, on June 16th, the library trustees decided that a referendum would be detrimental to the library’s attempt to secure funding, due to the history of failure of referendums in Accomack County’s history. Library trustees have expressed a desire to continue working with the Board of Supervisors to find another solution to benefit the library’s future.

At EveryLibrary we think that paid, targeted social media can build awareness during a crisis time for libraries. If you donate today to build the Rapid Response Fund, we will use it to buy ads on Facebook, sponsor tweets on Twitter, run ads on local media sites and networks, and fund Google Ad Words that quickly and effectively deliver the message for local library advocates. Your $25 dollar donation buys a lot of eyeballs. A $10 a month reoccurring contribution is thousands of ad impressions. Together, we can make a difference for libraries.

If you are going to ALA Annual, don’t forget to join us at the ALA14 After Hours Party co-hosted by EveryLibrary, Mango Languages and Treehouse. We were so excited for annual that we incorrectly said we were taking this week off. We will see you again on July 8 for another Rodeo.

That’s all for today. Join us in a couple weeks for another round up. Happy trails!