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Teen Library closure plan rapped By CHRIS BRISTOL A librarian presented Jackson County commissioners with more than 500 signatures and letters Wednesday against a controversial proposal that would shut down the Teen Library. Bob Linquist, a former police officer from San Francisco and one of three librarians assigned to the teen room at the downtown Medford branch, attacked the plan as a step in the wrong direction and raised the specter of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., last week. "I hate to see the youth services of this county treated as a line in a budget," he said. "We can't afford what happened in Colorado to happen here." His complaint was treated with some alarm by all three commissioners -- Ric Holt, Sue Kupillas and Jack Walker -- who distanced themselves from involvement in the decision. "We didn't make the cut," Walker protested. The decision, he and his colleagues added, was made by library management and the library's advisory board. "You hold the purse strings," Linquist replied. Located in a basement room of the 1911 Carnegie building, the Teen Library was established nine years ago as a sort of library-within-a-library to ensnare reluctant readers in the brain-building world of fact and fiction. In recent years, an Internet computer was added. Three librarians are assigned to supervise the room and assist teens, many of them home-schoolers, and parents intent on jump-starting homework assignments. Linquist said 27,000 publications were checked out last year. Under the proposal, the library would be converted into a general-purpose reading room and its teen-oriented literature available in the adult circulation room upstairs. Library Director Ronnie Budge said the move was made to save money. She blamed the inefficient design of the Carnegie building and said the teen library isn't always busy enough to justify the staff, who would be transferred upstairs or somewhere else within the 15-branch system. Linquist brought the petitions to the commissioners' regularly scheduled meeting, sandwiched between two days of hearings for the 1999-2000 fiscal-year budget. The commissioners make up half of the Budget Committee, which generally rubber-stamps budget recommendations. Commissioners have final say over the budget, however, and frequently make revisions. The library's proposed budget of just over $6.2 million -- a 3 percent increase -- comes up for review at 10 a.m. today in the county courthouse auditorium, 10 S. Oakdale. The commissioners promised to ask questions. Said Walker, "Very clearly, we will review that budget tomorrow." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA