The Eugene Public Library is bracing for budget cuts as the City Council crafts a budget for next year. The city faces an $11.5 million deficit.
The city tried to shore up that shortfall with a fire fee, but that is now going to voters, either in November or in a special election in August.
Linda Ague, the president of the Friends of the Library, expects the library will be among the services the city will have to cut.
“Dismal. Is there a word worse than dismal? Maybe. Whatever that word is,” she said. “We don’t really know the specifics because we don’t yet know how anyone’s going to decide what to do with the deficit.”
Ague says the worst case scenario is that the downtown library will be open fewer days per week. Staff could be put on furlough with the hope that the fire fee will pass and they can be rehired. The library has already experienced a $2 million reduction in previous budgets.
Ague said the library serves a larger purpose than providing books, movies, and other items to check out. It’s a safety net for the community.
“It is a safe place, downtown in Eugene, for people that otherwise would be very vulnerable,” she said.
Laura Cottam Sajbel is also on the Friends of the Library board. She told KLCC she recently spent a day at the downtown library staffing an informational table.
“I saw lots of families with their children coming to story time. There were students from across the street at LCC walking in to check out books and to read and study. There is a teen section and it was heavily used all day long," she said. “And then there were older people coming in just checking out books. There are all sorts of other programs. It reaches a wide range of people. It reaches way out into the community.”
The Friends of the Library Book Sale took place over the weekend at the Lane Events Center. It’s their biggest fundraiser. Those funds support purchasing books and other materials and funding programs at the library. But, Sajbel said, they can’t fundraise to pay for staffing the library.
She said all the money for library books and materials comes from fundraising by the Public Library Foundation, the Friends of the Library, and the library levy.
