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May bond measure would give libraries some breathing room Photo by Jim Craven By DANI DODGE Space is so tight at the Medford library headquarters, staff has taken to storing romance novels in the women's restroom. At branch libraries it's even worse. The Applegate branch, for example, is smaller than your average two-car garage. It doesn't even have a bathroom. "All of our libraries are way too small," said Library Director Ronnie Budge. "We had a study done in 1990 and they were too small then and it's 10 years later and virtually nothing has happened in that interim." Some facts In Ashland, voters approved their own $5.96 million library expansion bond measure last November. Passage of a countywide measure would means sharing the cost of Ashland library expansion with residents who live outside Ashland city limits, thus lowering the overall cost per person in Ashland. If Measure 15-6 passes, the Medford headquarters library will share its new building with Rogue Community College, which will lease space. The new library would be built on the downtown block bounded by East Ninth and 10th streets and Central and Riverside avenues, where Guthrie Motors now is situated. If the Medford library moves out of the old Carnegie building into new digs, the old building reverts to the city of Medford. City officials are considering a number of options for the building. The current library operating budget is $5.7 million a year. The biggest chunk of that is wages. Library officials say that bigger size does not mean bigger staffs. The new libraries will be built for efficiency, so that staff members can be working on different tasks while overseeing public areas. In 1999, library staff and volunteers reached out to 30,000 children and teens with reading programs, answered nearly 200,000 reference questions, and checked out 1.4 million books, magazines, CDs and videos. Jackson County residents have an opportunity, though, to remedy the situation. A $38.9 million bond on the May 16 ballot -- Measure 15-6 -- would allow the county to build a new main library and upgrade 13 others. That would mean improvements to every library in the system. Urban renewal money is funding a new White City branch, and Ashland voters already approved their own $5.96 million bond measure. "There's something for absolutely everyone," said Allison Rilling, chairwoman for Jackson County Friends of the Library. "This is 14 libraries and covers every citizen in the county." Ballots for the vote-by-mail election begin arriving in people's mailboxes next weekend. To pass, the county library bond not only needs approval by a majority of voters, but also at least a 50 percent ballot-return rate. Library officials decided to float the bond now, instead of in November's general election when the 50 percent requirement does not apply, because they didn't want the library measure to compete with a proposed bond measure to pay to upgrade the county's juvenile center. If the library bond passes at about 31 cents per thousand of property value, the owner of a $100,000 home would pay about $31.50 more in property taxes annually. Although there's no organized opposition to the library bond, some people have spoken out against it. Most believe the plan is too ambitious. "You shouldn't go try to do the whole gosh-darn ball of wax at once," said Homer Meeds, a retired Ruch resident who closely follows county business. "I think it's too much money. I just feel they need to take care of the big one first, and if that works out then go for the others." Walt Fitzgerald, a Sams Valley rancher and oftentimes county critic, said he would have supported a smaller bond. But not this one. "Everyone likes the library, including myself, but this represents a hungry wolf in sheep's clothing," Fitzgerald said. "Libraries are always popular -- they support youth and schools -- but the wolf part is it will be so doggone expensive." Budge says the decision to upgrade all the libraries at once was both political and practical. The first consideration is efficiency. "If we improve some of the libraries without improving them all, we don't get the greatest benefit even from the ones that are improved," she said. "We share the resources of the entire library system and if part of the system is poor and inadequate it kind of drags down the rest of it." Budge said it's also cheaper to do them all at once because it spreads the cost throughout the entire county. If cities and rural areas fund their own libraries, the people outside those areas who still use the library don't share in the cost. And city dwellers get hit with a higher bill: In communities such as Rogue River, more people from outside the city limits use the library than from inside the city. Library supporters also say that offering countywide improvements gives people in the rural areas of Jackson County more incentive to cast their ballots for the measure. The memory of a bond failure in 1982 -- to upgrade the main branch in Medford -- still haunts library officials. "When we have had countywide elections for the headquarters, people outside Medford didn't understand how it benefited them," Budge said. "It's hard for someone in Shady Cove or Rogue River or Talent to understand how a library in Medford benefits them." Although voters passed four library operating levies since 1984, the last time a bond passed to expand the headquarters library was 1950. Then, voters approved a $102,000 bond to expand the library from 7,000 to 15,000 square feet. Since then, building bonds have been rejected in 1977, 1981 and 1982. Rilling, though, said she believes this measure has strong support in the community. "Ronnie and Friends of the Library have been talking to community groups for two years now," Rilling said. "We have gotten no negative responses." She said the measure is affordable and appealing. "It's so eminently reasonable in price -- people know it can't be beat." Walking through the libraries, both the urban and rural, the space crunch is clear. In the children's section of the Medford main library, books are stacked beyond the reach of small children. Every week for story hour, librarians are forced to move and stack tiny tables and chairs to make room for the 15 to 25 children who show up. Larger library events take place across the street at the county courthouse because there's no way to host more than 25 children in the library. Because there's not enough room for all the administrative work at the main library, the library staff has to use two other county buildings buildings. In one, the county stores older magazines and a courier goes and picks up copies when requested. At the other, the library processing center, staffers order books for the library system as well as sort through tattered books deciding which to repair, which to sell and which to toss. The teen library has only six chairs. Crowds build at lunch time and after school, but oftentimes kids who have heard it's a cool place to hang out leave when they can't even get into the room. At the small, rented Ruch library -- in the basement of the rural equivalent of a strip mall -- the head librarian brought in her fan from home last week. It wasn't to cool things off, but to dry things out. Water had leaked through the storeroom ceiling. It wasn't the first time, either. But despite the obvious shortcomings, the overcrowded rural libraries in Ruch and elsewhere are still community gathering places. "We come here at least twice a week," said Cathy Egelston, who emerged from the Ruch branch with her 12-year-old home-schooled daughter, Belle Mahoney, and an armful of books and videos. "We like seeing our community, which is really spread out." When Belle was smaller, Egelston used to take her to story time. Now, Egelston and her daughter are learning how to surf the World Wide Web at the branch's computer terminals. And Belle meets her friends at the library in the afternoons to share girl talk. The librarians know the books Egelston likes and often point out new selections that may interest her. Those are all reasons why she's got a lawn sign supporting the May measure in the front yard of her Ruch home. The Ruch library could really do with a bigger, less-leaky location, she said. The library is much more than just a place to pick up books. "This ties the community together," Egelston said. Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA