Keywords
Citation
Fitzsimons, E. (1999), "Other funding issues", The Bottom Line, Vol. 12 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.1999.17012dab.006
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 1999, MCB UP Limited
Other funding issues
Other funding issues
Keywords: Local governments, Employees, Libraries
After a defeat in March of a quarter-cent sales-tax increase for San Diego County's eight needy library systems, the San Diego County library has received a 31 percent budget hike for FY 1999-2000 from the county commissioners. This is a $3.75 million increase over the previous year, and brings the operating budget to $15.72 million. The increase will make it possible to fund a new branch in the unincorporated area of Rancho San Diego, replace four cramped branches, and fund the hiring of eight part- and full-time children's and young adult library workers. There are also plans underway for a new site in Potrero with Community Development Block Grant Funds.
In Elizabethtown (Penn.) Governor Tom Ridge returned a tattered edition of Dickens, which he said was "possibly borrowed by a previous governor when the library opened 38 years ago." With the book he handed the librarian a check for $1.6 million. The money, however, was not an overdue fine; it was a matching grant from the governor's capital budget to build a new, larger library in another downtown location. Ridge made headlines in June by signing into a law a bill providing historic levels of funding for the state's poorer public libraries.
Eileen Fitzsimons is Development Editor, Neal-Schuman Publishers, New York, NY.