PORT TOWNSEND – Many students in a classroom of 10-year-olds at Swan School take their public library seriously.
They felt so strongly about it that they wrote a letter complaining to the City Council about the reduction in library hours from 54 to 46 per week.
The cutback was the result of a defeated utility use tax proposal during the Feb. 6 election.
Cecilia Bahls and Abigail McGuire read the letter to the council on Monday night.
The letter quotes teachers and staff as well as students at the private school at 2345 Kuhn St., which has operated since 1985.
“The library is a great place to lie down and read,” Swan School classmate Gus Wennstrom was quoted as saying in the letter.
“The library is a very important place to me and my fellow classmates,” said Anda Yoshina, who also signed the letter.
Cecilia, the daughter of Port Townsend residents Peter Bahls and Jude Rubin, explained why she went before the council.
“I saw the article in the paper and I really like the library,” she said.
Cecilia was joined by her classmate and friend Abigail, the daughter of Todd and Rebekkah McGuire.
Abigail said Cecilia told her classmates about the hour cutback.
After sharing in reading the letter to the council, Abigail said she felt “happy and excited” about putting forth her opinion.
In her statement to the council, Cecilia said, “As a bookworm, the library is very important to me, but it’s harder for me to get there when it’s open less.”
Cecilia, who visits the library with her family once a week and always leaves with a stack of books, is credited with spearheading the letter project and presentation to the council.
She is the daughter of Peter Bahls and Jude Rubin.
The girls’ teachers, Russell Yates and Lowell Johns, urged them to take on the letter on as a class assignment and Cecilia and Abigail agreed to present it at the council chambers at City Hall.
The unsuccessful Feb. 6 ballot proposal would have increased the use tax from 6 to 10 percent, raising $72,000 to fund positions to maintain existing library hours.
City Manager David Timmons, responding to the girls’ letter Monday night, said the library’s revenues have shown a great deal of revenue increase over the past 15 years.
He said that, although hours were cut back, a capital plan to expand is still in the works.
In an action unrelated to the concerns about shorter hours, the council unanimously accepted the library capital plan concept at the recommendation of the Community Development & Land Use Committee.
The council agreed to incorporate recommendations into the 2008 capital budget plan.
Proposed is a $5.2 million expansion of the 1913 8,000-square-foot Carnegie library building on Lawrence Street at Harris to 14,355 square feet.
The concept is three years away from actual construction, said Timmons.
It would expand the building slightly outward and possibly add a partial second floor, without altering the building’s historic character.
Port Townsend’s Library is one of 1,680 others that wealthy industrialist Andrew Carnegie funded between 1881 and 1917.
