The library and equity
Richard Burg wrote in a recent commentary that he was disappointed in the actions of the Healdsburg City Council when they insisted on equity in the new governing document for the Sonoma County Library of which the Healdsburg Regional Library is a founding member. I welcome Richard’s admittedly belated attention to a process that has been going on for years. Let’s try to answer his question, “What is Equity?”
Water for oil
In December I went to a Regional Climate Protection Authority presentation at the Healdsburg city council chambers. The RCPA was created in 2009 to improve coordination on climate change issues and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as was mandated by the ten county government’s partnership with the Climate Protection Campaign in 2005. The goal is to reduce county GHG emissions to 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2015. It was the CPC that first championed Sonoma Clean Power in 2004.
What is equity?
The specifics of the effort to re-draft the JPA governing the County Library System came to my attention very late in the process. I was pleased to read the paragraph in the draft revision which proposed allowing communities to provide supplemental funds for local branches. When the county library system budget does not meet locally perceived needs a community could support their local branch. The Monday closure of the branches, in place for the last three years, could be reversed by allowing communities to fund Monday library services. It would be a valuable mechanism for communities to have library services responsive to local needs.
