Clearwater considers closing some libraries

Council members spent three hours Thursday discussing various programs and city jobs that they could trim. But after two hours, they hadn’t agreed on many cuts.
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“We haven’t cut anything, hardly,” Hibbard said.

That’s when the libraries came up. During the discussion, council member John Doran combed through the city’s budget figures and calculated that closing the Beach, Countryside, East, and North Greenwood libraries would save roughly $1.25 million a year — not that he was suggesting that. Library director Barbara Pickell said that, if the libraries are facing major cuts, she’d rather have fewer locations that are open more hours, instead of more locations that are open fewer hours.

But she noted that the Beach, Countryside and East Branch libraries get about the same amount of use. “It would be difficult to deal with the loss of the East Branch facility,” she said. “It would have a tremendous effect.”

Source: St. Petersburg Times

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 and is filed under Libraries and Librarianship, Search News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.