Cobb library cuts

EDITOR’S NOTE: The scapegoats of the Cobb budget crisis

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East Cobb Library, Cobb budget crisis
The East Cobb Library has been in operation only since 2010 at Parkaire Landing Shopping Center. (East Cobb News photos by Wendy Parker)

The Cobb budget crisis will soon be addressed in serious detail by the Cobb Board of Commissioners, which is holding a budget retreat on Tuesday.

The week after that, next Monday, June 18 to be exact, at the East Cobb Senior Center, budget town halls will start around the county. There will be another one in our community, on July 9, at the Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center.

UPDATE: Cobb chairman proposes revised budget, keeping parks and libraries open

Cobb County government is facing a $30 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2019. We have known this and been told this for months.

That’s as big a deficit as the county faced during the worst of the recession.

Yet only a small handful of “options” for addressing this gap, submitted by a few department heads, have been made public.

They’re the departments that tend to get people’s emotions riled up: senior services, libraries and, this past week, parks, pools and recreation centers.

Here we go again.

Like the proposed library cuts, the cuts on parks and rec “draft list,” if enacted, would absolutely crush the provision of popular services.

Like the proposed library cuts, closing all of the parks and rec facilities on that list wouldn’t do much to close the deficit.

In East Cobb, the “draft list” includes Fullers Park and the Fullers Recreation Center, the Mountain View Aquatic Center, The Art Place and the Mountain View Community Center.

A little more than $3 million, to be exact, is what the parks and rec savings would add up to countywide. The library cuts would amount to less than that, roughly $2.9 million.

Along with new membership fees and increases for classes and rentals at senior centers, the possible elimination of the UGA Cobb Extension Service and shutting down Keep Cobb Beautiful (also on the parks and rec list), that still doesn’t equal what the county spends every year to pay off its obligations for SunTrust Park and other costs for Atlanta Braves games and events there.

Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center
The work of local artists on display at the $10.3 million Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center, which opened last December.

As I wrote back in February: SunTrust is untouchable, having been placed on the “must” list of budget items that are required to be appropriated by commissioners every year.

Parks, libraries and senior services are not. They’re merely on the “desired” list.

Yet the cost of delivering services has grown the most in public safety, transportation, courts, community development and water and sewer.

Library hours have not been added back to their pre-Recession totals. Cobb’s unwillingness to have Sunday library hours anywhere except the Switzer branch, but only during the school year, is ridiculous.

The library system’s budget details were laid out in painful detail months ago. Employees in these endangered departments know their jobs may be eliminated.

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Why are these low-cost, high-impact services, which add exponentially to our qualify of life, vulnerable to being gutted with a record tax digest predicted for 2018?

Citizens skeptical of paying higher property taxes think it’s a ploy by Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce to get a millage rate increase. He wants to add 1.1 mills to your property tax bill, which would just about cover the $30 million.

Getting you stoked up over the possibility of losing your library, or park, is an old tactic. His predecessor, Tim Lee, did the same thing. It worked during the Recession, when tax rates went up.

The county released a “Cobb budget journey” explainer this past week with information to bolster the argument that our current general fund millage rate is just about tapped out.

We’re paying a lower millage rate now than in 1990, despite the Cobb population having grown from 450,000 then to around 750,000 now. The tax hike imposed during the Recession was brought down a couple years ago, foolishly, by Lee, with a millage rate reduction right before losing his runoff with Boyce, and just as SunTrust became fully operational.

That vote only added to the budget jam that exists now.

I’m not wild about a tax increase either, and many homeowners are already paying higher tax bills because their assessments have gone up, some dramatically.

Instead of grazing around the edges, threatening to close parks and libraries and the Cobb Safety Village and whatnot, it’s time to tackle the truly big-ticket items. There’s got to be an honest conversation about what it really costs to properly serve a fast-growing county with basic, local government services.

Cobb is no longer the sleepy bedroom community it was when our family moved here in the mid-1960s. Many who simply wanted a quiet refuge in a ranch house on a wooded lot (some built by my father, a now-retired home contractor) are finding the density, traffic, noise and increasingly urban feel to Cobb, and even East Cobb, alarming.

So do I. That’s why a visit to a park, or a library has become something much more than a treat. For me, it’s almost essential to do this, at least once a week, or when I can.

But the truth is we require more public safety services, more court services, more transportation services, more zoning services, more water and sewer services. The current millage rate, even what Boyce has proposed, likely will not cover all of what’s required in a few years. Even if he gets his wish, it may not be enough.

Ebenezer Road park
Cobb commissioners recently spent $1.7 million to purchase land on Ebenezer Road for a future passive park.

Some question the wisdom of spending millions on future park land and opening new facilities built with SPLOST money, but that operate with county budget funds.

Those are valid issues, as is the subject of SPLOST reform. These topics are likely to be hashed out during the hot summer budget months ahead. They have to be part of an eventual effort to get ahead of budget issues.

In order for that to happen, Cobb leaders have to offer something of a vision for the county that hasn’t been forthcoming for years, even before the recession.

I’m admittedly a bleeding heart for parks and libraries, but scapegoating the services that Cobb has nickeled-and-dimed for decades, and playing a game of emotional blackmail with the public, isn’t the way to do that.

 

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The unwelcome return of Cobb library politics

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East Cobb Library
In the wake of steep budget cut proposals, Cobb library branches have set up tables for patrons to have their say, and contact their county commissioners. (East Cobb News photo by Wendy Parker)

I went to the East Cobb Library Saturday, and it was PACKED! With people of all ages, and from all walks of life. Yes, the weather was dreary, and yes, the few weekend hours it’s open certainly had a lot to do with the turnout.

We all know this, given how the East Cobb branch is the second-busiest in the Cobb County Public Library System. I read a few newspapers and magazines, browsed the bookshelves and did some research for this piece.

At times I wondered if all this might go away in a few months, this corner of the Parkaire Landing Shopping Center, given how the East Cobb Library is on a list of proposed closures.

I was afraid of getting too sentimental, since I grew up in East Cobb (and have written previously about my neighborhood branch, the late, great East Marietta Library).

I’ll admit I’m a bleeding heart for libraries, and this week some really bad emotions came flooding back when I saw not just the East Cobb branch on the hit list (as was suggested last year by commissioner JoAnn Birrell), and several others. Nearly half of all the county branches. A quarter of the operating budget may be slashed, and nearly half of the current operating hours.

For the second time in seven years, local elected officials are playing Cobb library politics, and this time I fear the results could be worse. In 2011, then-commission chairman Tim Lee threatened to shut down 13 of the 17 branches.

The county was in the midst of a budget crisis due to the recession, and his ploy worked. No branches were closed, but hours were cut back. Library patrons kicked up a fuss, and property taxes were raised.

As a citizen, I took a dim view of Lee’s tactics. Those of us who ardently support libraries were played, like a cheap fiddle, even though none of our branches were closed. We felt we had won a battle, but looking back, there was a larger war over our emotions that we may have conceded, and possibly for good.

As a ballyard sage famously put it, it’s déjà vu all over again. Lee’s successor, Mike Boyce, has learned very quickly in his first year in office that nobody wants their property taxes raised. He couldn’t get a 0.13-mills rate increase last year to fully fund the 2008 parks bond referendum that was part of his campaign.

For the last month or so, he’s been toting budget boards to speaking events around the county, with pie charts and lists and all kinds of dollar signs, illustrating a projected fiscal year 2019 deficit of at least $30 million.

Mike Boyce, Cobb budget
Cobb commission chairman Mike Boyce at an East Cobb Business Association luncheon in January.

It’s likely to be much higher, and he’s trying to get ahead of the process by repeating this message months ahead of time, preparing Cobb citizens for the worst, what he’s called “the painful truth.” Others think he’s pandering to their emotions to get a tax increase.

At a town hall meeting last month at the East Cobb Senior Center, he told seniors angry about fee increases and the imposition of a membership fee that “we’re all in this together.” Some of them groaned, but he understood the power they wield.

“You all vote,” he said. On the other hand, library patrons “may not all be voters, but if you close their libraries, they will become voters.”

There were some chuckles around the room. This was just a few weeks after the commissioners held their budget retreat, and instructed department heads to look for steep budget cuts.

This week, the library list was the first to be revealed, and nobody is laughing. These proposed cuts have stirred the emotions of library advocates, right on cue. Tuesday’s commissioners meeting will include a public comment session that figures to be the first of many occasions in which they will get an earful from citizens about libraries.

This round of Cobb library politics is complicated by two other major factors that weren’t there in 2011: the Atlanta Braves stadium, and a property tax rollback two years ago.

Boyce and East Cobb commissioner Bob Ott have been making a point recently that the $8.6 million Cobb pays annually for the bond issue to build SunTrust Park may pay off for itself this year.

However, that vote—made in haste in late 2013 following a sham of a process that lacked transparency and accountability—reflects what many, myself included, still believe to be misplaced priorities.

Ott and Birrell, East Cobb’s other commissioner, voted for the millage rollback in 2016 at the behest of Lee, right before Boyce trounced him in a runoff. Those decisions cannot be undone, but they certainly have contributed to Cobb’s financial state today.

Sewell Mill Library
The Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center opened in December, two months before drastic budget cuts were proposed by the library system.

We starve libraries in Cobb, and have for years. It’s ridiculous that I can’t go to my new neighborhood branch, the fantastic Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center, before 1 p.m. on a Saturday.

Never on a Sunday is any Cobb library branch open, except the main Switzer branch, but that’s only during the school year.

Braves stadium funding, by the way, is on the “must” list. That item, with a 30-year contract, moved to the head of the line of priorities. Libraries, must settle, as usual, for scraps, if there are any at all to have.

The public library system has a short history in Cobb. Until 1957, libraries were operated only in cities, by municipal governments in Marietta, Powder Springs and Austell. Then the Cobb-Marietta system was born, prodded by Dennis Kemp, a former library board chairman from West Cobb concerned that there were no library services for citizens in unincorporated Cobb.

The county would soon rapidly transform from farmland to suburbia. The first countywide library bond issue was in 1965, and the library system became part of Cobb County government in the 1970s.

I discovered this information in a book about the history of Cobb County by Thomas Allan Scott, a historian at Kennesaw State University. It was published in 2003 by the Cobb Landmarks and Historical Society, and it’s available in every Cobb library branch.

I may not have known this without spending a lot of time in library branches here in East Cobb. Sure, you can buy that book on Amazon, and do a lot of things online, and on your phone, that libraries still haven’t quite grasped. A book I checked out Saturday at the East Cobb Library, “BiblioTech,” argues eloquently that libraries are as vital today as ever, but they need to get their digital act together.

It’s hard to do that if you don’t have the resources, and political support when it matters the most. Sadly, libraries pop up on the Cobb political radar only when they’re threatened.

The forward-thinking Sewell Mill branch was approved via SPLOST and partially funded by the state. Weeks before opening, commissioners acted in seat-of-the-pants fashion to fund new staff positions that were known about for months.

On the list of proposed library closures revealed this week is the Kemp Memorial Library, named after Dennis Kemp. Another is the Sibley library on South Cobb Drive, named after Frances Weldon Sibley, the first licensed librarian in Cobb County, who started her 30-year-plus tenure in that role in the 1930s.

They were visionaries, well ahead of their time, who believed in the common good of libraries long before they became the third-rail political issue of today.

Whatever you think about tax increases, and the SPLOST process, it’s a shame their names could vanish into history, as well as the East Cobb Library, because elected officials might end up doing more this year than simply playing to your emotions. And mine.

 

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East Cobb Library proposed for closure due to county budget cuts

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East Cobb Library, Cobb budget cuts

What East Cobb Library advocates have feared for months has come to pass: Their branch, the second busiest in the Cobb County Public Library System, has been formally recommended for closure due to Cobb County government budget cuts.

UPDATE: Cobb chairman proposes revised budget, keeping parks and libraries open

Several months after Cobb commissioner JoAnn Birrell suggested closing the East Cobb Library, the branch is included on a proposed list of eight library closings or consolidations from the library system to the commissioners.

The Cobb library system has set up an “I Love My Library” page on its website with information about the draft budget proposal, submitted by library director Helen Poyer.

The other library branches that would be closed under the proposal include Kemp Memorial in West Cobb, Lewis A. Ray and Windy Hill in Smyrna, Sweetwater Valley in Austell and Sibley in Marietta. In addition, the Acworth and Kennesaw branches would be consolidated.

The proposed budget cuts also include the elimination of all part-time staff positions, and hours would be cut nearly in half, from the current 780 hours a week throughout the system to 424.

The proposed library cuts would total nearly $3 million, or about 25 percent of the system’s current fiscal year operating budget of $12 million.

Cobb County officials say they’re facing a fiscal year 2019 deficit of at least $30 million, and have been directing department heads to recommend cuts in services to balance the budget.

“We need to really fight, now that we’ve seen it in black and white,” said Rachel Slomovitz, who calls the East Cobb Library her “second home” and who has been a vocal library proponent.

The East Cobb Library got a reprieve for fiscal year 2018, but that came just as the Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center was set to open on Lower Roswell Road. Commissioners temporarily delayed full funding of that expanded branch—formerly the East Marietta Library—until after the start of the fiscal year 2018 in October.

In December, Slomovitz started an online petition, seeking the support of 1,000 people for raising the millage rate to avoid library budget cuts. Thus far, that petition has more than 750 signatures.

In her petition, Slomovitz estimated that what she called a “minor” millage increase would result in a $25 a year increase in property taxes to fund libraries. Last week, she started a closed Facebook group called “Save Cobb Libraries” to provide information and urge other citizens to contact their elected officials.

The East Cobb Library costs around $770,000 in staffing and for other operations every year, but that doesn’t include an additional $263,000 in annual rental expenses.

The branch opened at the Parkaire Landing Shopping Center in 2010, after operating as the Merchants Walk Library. The cost of moving and relocating the branch was borne by the developers of Merchants Walk when that retail center was redeveloped.

“I always feared that East Cobb would be on the list” because the branch is leased, Slomovitz said, but she added that the situation is an opportunity for citizens to reinforce to commissioners what’s important to them.

She said she noticed that during recent town hall meetings on senior center fees that funding for the Atlanta Braves’ SunTrust Park was included on a “required” list, while libraries are on a “desired” list, along with senior services and parks and recreation.

“Why can’t the libraries be regarded as just as worthy?” Slomovitz said.

In early 2011, then-chairman Tim Lee proposed closing 13 of the 17 branches as the county faced deep budget cuts due to the recession.

It was a ploy to get commissioners to come to the cutting table and it worked, but also generated heated opposition from library patrons who packed the commissioners meeting chambers.

No branches were closed, but library hours were cut from 1,089.5 hours a week to the current 780 hours, and some programs and services were also reduced.

The new proposed closures come less than a month after county officials, including all five commissioners, participated in ribbon-cutting ceremonies at the new Sewell Mill branch, which has been declared “the library of the future.”

Current Cobb commission chairman Mike Boyce has wanted to get an early start on the FY 19 budget, which doesn’t go into effect until October. Budget adoption is in July.

But just as he heard from Cobb seniors about rising costs and a membership fee to use county senior centers, Boyce and commissioners are bracing for an earful from library supporters.

In addition to the Sewell Mill Library, the East Cobb area is served by the Mountain View Regional Library on Sandy Plains Road and Gritters Library, located near Canton Road and Piedmont Road.

The “I Love My Library” page reminds readers that the proposals are not final, and that there will be public comment periods at commission meetings to offer citizens a chance to have their say about the libraries, and the budget. The page also includes scheduled meeting dates over the next few months.

“We’ve saved the libraries before,” said Slomovitz, who admits she’s “scared” by the prospect of the East Cobb Library closing its doors for good. “If we did it once, we can do it again.”

 

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