2001-11-08 - 11:06 a.m.

bad citizen

Bad Citizen----------

Yup. That is me. I usually vote even when significant others don't, but not this year. In my rural area of the county, I had only one thing to vote for and I chose to abstain. It was a tough decision. I really would have liked to see the thing we were voting on come to pass, but not in the way it would have.

The 2 counties are trying to start a library district. A very worthy project. Free library cards for the last 6 months or more, access to both libraries, no fees for audio books and videos. How could one lose? My principal library card costs $31.50 a year, rising from $6 in 1972, and is worth every cent. The other town's library is now 12 a year, up from 2 and is a good little library. 2d goes more often there than I do altho I go there to buy discards. It is just a little too out of the way for me in that direction.

In any case, both cards are less than 45 and since I check out 15-20 books every 2-4 weeks, I definitely get my money's worth. Our property taxes would have risen about 30 and we would have had the extra benefits mentioned, but at a great cost to others in the community. It doesn't take much of a farm to be worth 250 thousand and they would have had to pay 200 a year, businesses even more.

At first, I thought it was fair because after all, don't farm kids use city parks, pools, and ball parks almost free? And shouldn't everyone have access to a library? All good reasoning but a little skewed. From personal experience, I know being poor doesn't keep a person away from books. Scraping together the money for a card isn't easy but can be done. School libraries are available and yard sales have 10 cent books all the time. Increasing a farmer or businessman's taxes by hundreds of dollars is a bit much and still leaves lots of people using the library getting off scot-free. Folks who rent can send their kids to the library after school each day for free babysitting and book reading.

There must be an equitable way a library district can be formed. Anyway, I just stayed home. I know it was a disappointment for my library friends. They had worked hard for this and I had planned to support them, but not this way. Each library will not suffer from keeping the status quo, just miss getting some goodies, but perhaps someone will come up with a better way. I'll certainly vote for that!

EE's devotional

newAutumn Leaves

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