Local libraries bracing for cuts as deficit crisis hits Sacramento

Free summer lunches, park passes, inter-library transfers, all in the crosshairs as officials work to finalize California's budget amid large deficit.

photo credit: Courtesy, Sonoma County Library

Typically black and white, now there's red all over.

No, it's not the local paper, it's Sonoma County's Library budget.

With the shortfall in Sacramento into the billions of dollars, state support for local libraries is on the chopping block, as Governor Gavin Newsom and the legislature finalize a state budget due in 10 days.

photo credit: Courtesy, Sonoma County Library
Inside the county library's historic archives

In a monthly newsletter, Sonoma County Library Director Erika Thibault said the agency is both bracing for cuts in state support and urging people to contact their assemblymember and state senator and demand the expected cuts be rescinded.

According to Thibault, the Governor's proposal would cut in half the roughly three and a half million in funding

provided by the California Library Services act.

The money is used locally to operate inter-library loans of books and other materials.

The governor's "May revise" also called for eliminating a $5.5 million program that provides lunches to school-age children and youths when schools are on summer break. But, Thibault said close to half of that funding was restored in negotiations.

Lunches are served weekdays at seven of the Sonoma County Library's 14 branches.

Also on the chopping block are borrowable state park day use passes. Those allow people who can't afford the typical eight to ten dollar parking fee, to use state parks anyway.

A survey conducted by the California State Parks Foundation found nearly two thirds considered cost to be their main reason for not having visited state parks previously. And that nearly 70% say they earned $60,000 a year or less.