Largest library closure in U.S. looms / Federal funding dries up, leaving 15 branches in Oregon county on brink

Largest library closure in U.S. looms
Federal funding dries up, leaving 15 branches in Oregon county on brink

Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, March 4, 2007

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Marvin Rosenberg worked with his wife on a mural at the e... Gary Stensrud with Jackson County Facilities Maintenance ... Miranda Canfield, 13, volunteers at the Central Point Lib... The new main library in downtown Medford, Ore., features ... More...

(03-04) 04:00 PST Medford, Ore. -- Pat Hardy hefted two book bags stuffed with "cozy murder mysteries" through the snow to Ella Fitzsimmons' front door at the Blue Spruce Mobile Estates trailer park.

"I brought you extra, because this will be your last delivery," said Hardy, who has been bringing the bloodless whodunits to the homebound 78-year-old every month for the last several years.

Fitzsimmons' literary lifeline will be cut April 7, when Jackson County in southern Oregon shuts down its entire public library system.

The 15 libraries serving this rural forest community lost $7 million in federal funding this year -- nearly 80 percent of the system's budget.

[Podcast: Kids: We like our libraries ]

[Podcast: The Breakfast Club at Sally's Kitchen in Medford, Oregon, on the merits of a sales tax and whether libraries are worth saving]

Now, not long after all 15 branches were rebuilt or remodeled, every one will be shuttered in what's being called the largest library shutdown in the United States. The crisis in southern Oregon can be traced not only to changing funding priorities on Capitol Hill, but also to crooked railroad deals in the Wild West, a spotted owl and a shrinking timber harvest.

Struggling library systems have come close to extinction in Salinas, Merced County and Niagara Falls, N.Y., but they pulled back from the brink, said Leonard Kniffel, editor of American Libraries magazine.

Nothing, he said, compares to the scope and severity of the pending closure in Jackson County, where about 100 library employees will be laid off.

Although the Bay Area is on a library high, having just opened four state-of-the-art libraries in Alameda, Belmont, Hercules and San Mateo, book lovers like Fitzsimmons in rural areas are getting left in the dark.

"I am very ticked!" she said. "Something screwy is going on."

Her sentiment is shared throughout southern Oregon, where the library crisis has stirred accusations of county mismanagement, children's protests in the streets, and a backlash against a proposed property tax to keep the libraries open.

An otherwise quiet collection of former timber towns, Jackson County has drawn national attention as librarians and book lovers lament in the blogosphere about the demise of a society that can't find a way to safeguard the citizenry's right to stay informed.

"I wish we could call FEMA; this feels like a natural disaster to me," said Ted Stark, interim library director for Jackson County.

"Libraries are so much more than just libraries in rural areas. This is where all the town meetings are held, where all the kids come after school, where everything -- everything -- happens," he said. Indeed, today;s libraries have evolved from merely loaning out books to providing Internet access, reading hour for babies, community meeting centers and art galleries.

Last fall, Congress failed to reauthorize a $400 million annual subsidy to 41 states to help rural counties prop up their local economies. Oregon took the biggest hit -- $150 million. Jackson County lost $23 million and had to slash everywhere, from reducing jail beds to cutting search and rescue teams.

That meant some hard choices, said Jackson County Administrator Danny Jordan.

"Losing libraries is a huge business deterrent -- who wants to move to a city that doesn't have libraries?" Jordan said. "But we decided we had to maintain public safety, which is already taking a $3.5 million cut. We won't be able to monitor misdemeanor sex offenders anymore. The hard reality is that libraries are not an option for us."

Jordan says Congress broke a promise when it cut off the funds -- the money was supposed to be in exchange for land taken away from Oregon by President Theodore Roosevelt.

In the early 1900s, Roosevelt took 2.4 million acres away from the Oregon-California Railroad, which was accused of swindling land deals in exchange for building the railroad. When the federal government reclaimed the land, Oregon lost half its property tax base.

To make up for it, the federal government agreed to split timber revenues on the acreage with Oregon. Over the next 50 years it was a lucrative arrangement, and timber money was used to build courthouses and jails, pave roads and free Oregonians from having to pay sales taxes.

The good times petered out in the early 1990s, when the northern spotted owl was listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, all but shutting down large-scale logging. Today, just one large sawmill remains in Jackson County, compared with 91 in 1954.

While promising to come up with rules for a more ecologically friendly logging method, Congress agreed in 2000 to continue "safety net" payments to rural counties for six more years. But no one did the hard work of figuring out how to balance the timber industry with nature. So the checks stopped in December 2006.

"The federal government stopped making money off of Oregon trees, so they stopped sending money to us -- it's that simple," said Leonard Kranenburg, a retiree who meets his "breakfast club" buddies every morning at Sally's Kitchen in Medford for coffee and conversation.

In November, Jackson County residents voted down a property tax levy that would have generated $9 million a year to keep the libraries open. It was the third time since 1984 that voters were asked to bolster the library budget, but the first time they said no.

"Back in November, the feds had not cut us off yet, and the possibility they'd continue to fund us was still there, so people didn't think the libraries were really going to close," said Margaret Jakubcin, a regional manager for the Jackson County Libraries.

Library supporters are trying again. They put an identical property tax levy on the upcoming May ballot. But in order to pass, 50 percent of the registered voters have to participate in the election, and a majority of them have to vote yes.

While Kranenburg's breakfast companions Sixto Rodriguez and Joe Camp say they will vote for it, Kranenburg sees a moral imperative to say no.

"The government broke their promise to Oregon," he said. "I see this as our way of fighting back. We can't give in. If we do, that's like taking away our guns."

Librarians have become political lightning rods in Jackson County.

"Some people come into the library and cry when they find out; others yell at us," said Luke Kralik, who just earned his master's degree in library science so he could work in the new Medford Central Library.

The contemporary 83,000-square-foot stone and concrete building has enormous glass panels on the second floor, children's gardens, bronze sculptures in the reading room and a computer network that allows librarians to answer instant message reference questions.

"There's something magical about the public library -- those moments when you help a kid find a book on wolves, or someone comes in with a family member whose just been diagnosed with something and they need help finding information," Kralik said. "I can't imagine what it would be like if that were gone."

Joy Davis, who has been blogging about the impending closure of her branch in the small town of Phoenix, said she's been getting sympathy worldwide in response to her posts.

"When I first heard the library is going to close, I almost passed out -- I had to sit down," said Davis, who checks out about 30 books a week to research her writing projects. Currently, she's interested in pinpointing the source of the conflict between creationism and evolution.

"I have a set of Britannica books, but that's not really a replacement," she said.

Despite her Internet savvy, Davis doesn't trust online information and depends on the library for solid data.

Kniffel, the American Libraries magazine editor, said most people feel the same way, and despite the advent of electronic information, library visits nationwide increased 61 percent between 1994 and 2004.

"Say you search something online and get 550,000 hits. How do you know which one is the right one?" he said. "You need a knowledgeable navigator to help you."

Miranda Canfield, 13, worries she will get F's on her essays if she can't rely on the librarians at Central Point Library in Jackson County.

"All my friends at school are talking about the libraries, and we were thinking of collecting cans or cleaning up yards to raise money to keep them open," she said.

While libraries have become the most contentious political issue in southern Oregon, everyone can agree that a long-term funding solution is needed.

"We're tired of begging Washington for money," said Jackson County Commissioner C.W. Smith.

There's talk in Jackson County of bringing back sustainable-yield logging, cities running their own libraries, and even mention of the unmentionable -- instituting a sales tax. Local politicians are pressuring Congress for a one-year rural funding extension.

Smith has two suggestions. He wants the government to keep half the Oregon timber lands as wildlife habitat but allow the state to sell the other half so the land could go back on the tax rolls.

While the spotted owl's listing "has been tied up in courts for nearly two decades, the trees didn't stop growing," said Smith, pointing to a map of forest fires in his office. The red blotches on the map indicate a steady increase in forest fires since 1980.

"In some areas, the Forest Service is paying $400 an acre just to thin it," he said.

Smith is also talking to school superintendents and city mayors about pooling resources to keep the libraries open.

"Whether we could make it work would vary from community to community," he said.

In Talent, a town of 20,000 halfway between Medford and Ashland, residents shared cake Monday at the grand opening of their new public library. The foyer was decorated with a neighbor's collection of gleaming pink conch shells, each one the size of a football.

Three times the size of the old library, the new 7,000-square-foot branch has a teen room with a graffiti wall, a Spanish-language section, and floor-to-ceiling windows in the children's area that allow parents to read on indoor couches while keeping an eye on the playground outside.

"We're trying to be upbeat, but how ironic is it to celebrate an opening that's going to last six weeks?" said branch supervisor Laurel Prchal.

If the property tax proposal on the May ballot fails, she fears the libraries are sunk.

"In 2000, when Congress started paying the timber subsidies to Oregon, we were in a surplus. We weren't at war. We didn't just have a massive hurricane in New Orleans," she said.

Prchal raised the new flag for the first time outside the Talent Library. But its first trip to the top of the mast was a short one. Prchal waited a few seconds, then lowered it halfway -- an Oregon soldier had been killed in Iraq.

At the Ruch Branch, a 30-minute drive east of Medford, artist Marvin Rosenberg lovingly pointed out the ceramic pieces of the library's mural. Residents of all ages made the pieces and pressed them into a cement backing: There were black bears, covered wagons, Canada geese, salmon, lumberjacks, even Bigfoot peeking from behind a tree. The fire chief had pressed his badge into the mural.

"This place is our home. This is our community center. This is where we problem-solve. They can't take this away," Rosenberg said.

Largest library closure in U.S. looms / Federal funding dries up, leaving 15 branches in Oregon county on brink.