Libraries are repositories for what the great Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold called "the best that has been known and thought in the world."
Niagara Falls Mayor Vince Anello, who knows little and thinks less, probably never heard of Arnold. His idea of a good idea is to shut down the Niagara Falls Public Library next June.
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And Councilmen Charles Walker, Babe Rotella, James Stewart and Bob Anderson decided to go along with the preposterous proposal.
Unless something unforeseen occurs, Niagara Falls will become the only city with a population of 50,000 or more in the entire United States without a library.
Currently, the Earl Brydges and LaSalle libraries operate on a budget of about $2 million a year.
There are 16 full-time and 29 part-time staffers, 10 fewer than there were five years ago. Three of those employees are paid for with state and federal grants, money that will be lost when the libraries close.
Over the past 11 months, 267,804 books, videos and periodicals have been checked out, and more than 30,000 people have logged onto the Internet.
How many people use the library?
Just 672,261 so far this year.
Nearly 50,000 books have been checked out of the Children's Section at the Earl Brydges branch and, in July, 450 kids from the neighborhood attended a Fun Day event there.
The library's auditorium has hosted more than 9,000 people.
It would be interesting to contrast these numbers with corresponding figures from City Hall.
Hardly anyone bothers showing up at City Council meetings anymore, and the mayor's bloated budget reads more like a make-work program for the Anello family and its endless cadre of sycophants.
But no such numbers are available for City Hall.
Perhaps some under-employed grants writer, parking lot administrator or engineering assistant could be corralled to put them together.
As per state regulation, the Niagara Falls Public Library is the central library in the Nioga library system, which includes Niagara, Orleans and Genesee counties.
The regulations stipulate that the library must be open at least 55 hours each week. Closing the library will not only eliminate 45 jobs and wreak havoc on the city's cultural heritage, it would amount to the forfeiture of hundreds of thousands of dollars in state grants.
Anello's master plan is to hold an election next spring that would jettison the library from city control and transfer it to the school district. Voters here rejected the exact same plan three years ago and, even if the referendum gets on the ballot and is passed, there is no funding budgeted by either the city or the school district for the final six months of 2005, and the library will be closed.
The plan would further entail another special election, in which the school board would ask for additional money to run its newly acquired library system.
That's right, your taxes would go up anyway.
Anello and the Council have also chosen to ignore the city's 1927 LaSalle annexation resolutions, which explicitly state that library services must be maintained at certain levels in LaSalle. Given their apparent contempt for reading, this is perhaps not surprising.
Anello has scheduled a public meeting on the library issue for this Thursday, Dec. 9.
Is he having it at City Hall, where taxpayers maintain the City Council chambers that seat more than 300 and boast a fine public address system?
Nope.
Is he having it at the Earl Brydges Library, where taxpayers maintain a 450-seat auditorium complete with a PA system and decent stage lighting?
Nope.
How about the brand-new auditorium at Niagara Falls High School?
Forget about it.
This public meeting will be held at St. John de LaSalle, 8469 Buffalo Ave.
Why? Who knows.
Maybe his cousin is the priest over there.
"My No. 1 goal is, for once and for all, to stop this misinformation that's being put out," Anello told a gullible reporter.
"The people that are making these accusations, the people that are making these wild assumptions, why aren't they proposing options that make sense?" he added.
Schools Superintendent Carmen Granto and Library Director Betty Babanoury told me independently last week that if Anello's plan is allowed to proceed, the City of Niagara Falls will not have a public library after June.
Anello's options, now squandered, included collecting the $250,000 in back rent owed to the city by the operators of the golf dome instead of gifting them with the golf course and slashing approximately $500,000 from the city payroll by firing all the friends and relatives he's hired. It's been one year since the mayor and his Council were sworn into office.
The major accomplishments they can boast of include giving away the Hyde Park Golf Course, raising taxes by 6 percent and, now, shuttering the public library.
It's enough to make you wonder what they'll do for the next three years.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Dec. 7 2004 |