They eat up millions of your hard earned tax dollars. It’s money that could be used to keep your child’s school running. So with the internet and e-books, do we really need millions for libraries?
Libraries are quiet havens for the community. They take us to other worlds. They even make us laugh. But should these institutions — that date back to 1900 B.C. — be on the way out?
There are 799 public libraries in Illinois. And they’re busy. People borrow more than 88 million times a year.
But keeping libraries running costs big money. In Chicago, the city pumps $120 million a year into them. In fact, a full 2.5 percent of our yearly property taxes go to fund them.
That’s money that could go elsewhere – like for schools, the CTA, police or pensions.
I'm not so sure closing libraries and then shoving the estra funding into school districts is an answer. I've noticed that some of the absolute worst school districts in the country also are funded at the hightest funding rates per student in the country. Just throwing money at school districts doesn't seem to solve anything other than supporting extra layers of administrative positions and construction of state-of-the-art sporting facitlities.
I'm shocked someone would even consider closing libraries, even if it did cost an entire 2.5% of the tax money that was already taken (not 2.5% of the GDP). Only an ultra-conservative with money troubles bad enough to look for ways to cut spending in any place possible would consider this. I learned more through my private study at libraries than I did in school. Not to mention it runs programs for children, and in some cases these programs provide the children with things to do rather than breaking laws. So really, it would seem that libraries provide more education, societal protection (keeping children out of harm's way, etc.), and entertainment than if the money were spent elsewhere.