Editor: As one of the Friends of the New Port Richey Library and a discussion leader for several of its programs promoting literacy and reading, I oppose Council member Tom Finn's proposed turnover of the city library to Pasco County.
On July 22, along with three other concerned citizens, I spoke at the City Council budget meeting. Like many other municipal libraries, the New Port Richey Library is the linchpin of local democracy and the intellectual heart of the community; the focus of community involvement, particularly for youth, seniors, and those with fixed incomes and limited means of transportation; and the repository of invaluable local history materials and a vital force in historic preservation of community identity.
Other citizens who spoke up for the library at the City Council budget meeting gave clear, well-grounded reasons, such as competent, resourceful management, including procurement of grants and other income totaling more than $130,000, and references to successful historic preservation initiatives in neighboring Pinellas County, where a library cooperative supports a system of strong municipal libraries.
I was disappointed to see the efforts and rational arguments of these concerned citizens, who cared enough to attend the City Council meeting and speak on behalf of the New Port Richey Library, dismissed with your editorial writer's statement, "the public reacted emotionally to Finn's proposal."
The editorial trivializes civic pride and implies that the only relevant criterion of value is the bottom line on the ledger sheet.
The editorial also contained inaccurate information. It claimed that the library employs 27. It has only 19 year-round full and part-time employees and one temporary summer employee to assist with the summer reading programs and other activities for youth. The majority of the 19 employees are part time, yet with this minimal staff, the New Port Richey Library excels in every professionally acknowledged service category, for example, circulation per capita and library visits per capita.
Most recent data show 7.65 library visits per capita at the New Port Richey Library and 2.81 at the Pasco County Library. The editorial assumes that if services are curtailed at the New Port Richey Library, city residents can simply patronize county branches like Regency Park, the planned Trinity branch, or Hudson, the only full-service county library in West Pasco. It is highly unlikely that city residents of modest means would do that.
Your July 29 editorial calls upon the city to refrain from burdening folks of the least means. Giving away their library burdens them with loss of access to a full-service library and may result in their having to pay higher county taxes. As you have pointed out, after the Hugh Embry Library in downtown Dade City was turned over to the county, its improvement was financed by a $10-million voter-approved bond issue.
Poor New Port Richey. Its citizens are being ill-served by an ambitious politician playing a shell game with the municipal library. I hope they are smart enough to see through the ruse.
-- Carmine J. Bell, Port Richey
EDITOR'S NOTE: The city budget indicates 27 positions for the library: Eight full-time and 13 part-time or temporary employees and six AARP volunteers.
-- Education goes beyond partisan politics
Re: Superintendent's nod to Republican is premature, July 28 letter.
-- Editor: What troubles me is that the letter writer appears to employ a double standard which I find curious, to say the least.
On the one hand, he states that there is already too much politics involved in our statewide education system and I am wholeheartedly in agreement with him. At the same time, however, he chastises Pasco County School superintendent Dr. John Long, a Democrat, for endorsing Chuck Rushe, a Republican, as his successor.
Securing a quality education for our children is one of those areas which, I believe, should be above and beyond the issue of party affiliation. Part of the problem, as I see it, is that both political parties have been so busy blaming each other for the problems that no one has yet come up with viable solutions for improvement of the educational system in a manner that promotes both learning and fairness.
As long as the governor blames the Legislature, the Legislature blames the governor, the unions blame the Legislature and the governor, and the parents blame the teachers and the superintendent, we will remain stuck in the quicksand of the blame game and will be exhausting our energies on a political treadmill leading nowhere. This contributes to apathy on the part of many when the fact is that more involvement from all sectors is essential.
While I appreciate the letter writer's call for party loyalty, and applaud him for it, by criticizing Dr. Long's decision to endorse someone outside his own party he plays into the hands of those who have allowed partisanship and political expediency to take precedence over insuring that our children grow into well-educated adulthood.
-- Mark S. Alper, New Port Richey
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