Outraged at the prospect of no library service on Fridays due to lack of funding, the city council of Wheaton, Illinois, is considering an ordinance to require the Wheaton Public Library to remain open at least four hours per day for a six-day week during the summer and a seven-day week during the school year. The proposal is less a tribute by council members to the library’s indispensability than an indication of their displeasure that trustees chose this means to close a $300,000 budget gap, which was created when Wheaton officials withheld part of the library’s millage to cover a municipal property-tax shortfall.
“Everybody understands in the community that all of our departments have had cuts in staff and in revenue,” Council member Howard Levine said in the June 29 Arlington Heights Daily Herald. “But none of our other departments have decided they are not going to work a particular day.”
The reaction by Wheaton officials is an anomaly amid the score of ongoing fiscal crises in many communities across the country. In most cases, elected officials are seeking to reduce library service and staff to save money while library supporters are fighting to keep their doors open and their facilities as fully staffed as possible.
The dispute between Wheaton city hall and the library board, whose members are appointed by the mayor with the approval of the city council, has quickly escalated into Mayor Michael Gresk threatening to oust any trustee who okayed the Friday closure plan. “We just need to have a different approach to the way the library board makes their decisions,” Mayor Gresk said in the July 5 Daily Herald.
