Public and Academic Library Closures in the U.S., U.K., and Eire, Part V

Library JournalExecutive Director Michael Kelley reported on Tuesday, December 27, 2011, “The Cumberland County Library in Bridgeton, New Jersey, is fighting — once again — for its life” (“Fights to Stay Open”).  The Board of Chosen Freeholders had informed the Cumberland County Library’s fourteen employees to prepare for layoffs and the library’s possible closure in FY 2012, which began in January, “or, at best, another sharp cut to the library’s already truncated budget.”[1]

The Cumberland County Library (CCL) in New Jersey is not to be confused with The Cumberland County Public Library & Information Center in North Carolina or the Cumberland County Library System in Pennsylvania.  “We faced closure twice this year already,” said Jean Edwards, Acting Director. “In March, the freeholders announced that the library had been removed from the budget [for FY11], and we received a notice from personnel that everyone was slated for layoffs,” she said.

Kelley wrote, “An outcry from the community saved the library, but not a good part of its budget: in May, the freeholders cut the library’s operating budget in half, to $400,000. The library, which has a service population of about 156,000 and, according to Edwards, has about 5500 visitors coming through its doors every month, had to use its $150,000 rainy day fund and a $30,000 state grant to stay in business. The result was no bookmobile service (driver was laid off), most of the book and film budget was gone as well as regular children’s programming.”

Ms. Edwards explained that, as a result, the CCL is falling below the required maintenance of effort levelas defined by New Jersey state law.  She also said the CCL did not reach staffing, hours, and collection requirementsmonitored by the New Jersey State Library that factor into state aid decisions.

“One option that the county seems to be considering is cutting back the hours and staff further,” Ms. Edwards said. “I have been directed by the county administrator to prepare a schedule for a 40 hour week,” she said. 

They have followed through on this reduction of hours.  A check of the CCL’s Web site shows it is now closed on Sundays and Mondays and is open from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays and from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays.

The county is facing a $10,000,000 deficit.  Recent elections brought the Republicans a slim (4-3) majority on the Board of Chosen Freeholders, Kelley noted.

He wrote, “Republicans campaigned in favor of closing the library as a cost saving move, according tolocal reports. However, a committee has been charged with coming up with a transition plan, and its members have met with the directors of other libraries in Cumberland County to gauge the implications.”

“No decision has been made,” Mary Grucciotold the Press of Atlantic City,a daily newspaper published in Pleasantville, New Jersey.  Ms. Gruccio, an Assistant Superintendent for the Vineland Public School District, is the only Republican to win a seat on the Board of Chosen Freeholders in the last election, but her victory created the G.O.P. majority. “Maybe there may be ways for us to revive it. We’re waiting to get feedback. We want to do the right thing, and are taking our time and looking at it,” she said.

Library advocates say the potential closure of the CCL would exacerbate conditions that are already in miserable condition.  Cumberland County is one of New Jersey’s poorest countieswith 16.4% of the population living below the official poverty line.  As one would expect, the populace suffers from accompanying high illiteracy and unemployment rates.

“If anything Cumberland County needs more libraries rather than less,” said Irene Percelli, Director of the Millville Public Library.  The latter is one of the three municipal libraries in Cumberland County. The other two are the Vineland Public Library and the Bridgeton Public Library.

“Services were lost but the staff, despite the constant cloud of layoffs, is dedicated to fulfilling the mission of the county library, to offer residents the right to read and learn,” Ms. Edwards said.  “It is more important than ever to protect the library for the future — for the fortunate and less fortunate,” she said.

If the CCL were to close, library patrons would have to rely on the three municipal libraries, but Ms. Percelli said to Kelley that, despite New Jersey’s population density, Cumberland County has many of the characteristics that make life challenging in a rural area with long travel times between libraries and a digital divide.  “The closest library to us is 8.5 miles away,” Percelli said. “And a lot of people do not have Internet access at home. We only have 16 computers. How can we accommodate that kind of load?” she said.

“A lot of our patrons can afford public transportation but not their own transportation,” Edwards said. “And it’s over an hour by bus to Vineland.”  Further, to help absorb the cost of serving non-resident patrons who would no longer be able to access CCL services, the municipal libraries would likely have to begin assessing a $50 non-resident fee, Ms. Edwards said.

Presently, residents of townships in Cumberland County only support the CCL, but any county resident can use any of the three municipal libraries in the county without having to pay a fee thanks to the Cumberland Libraries United System (CLUES).  This is a resource-sharing network, founded in 1990, that instituted a county-wide library card system and an online union card catalog.

According to Ms. Edwards, more than 104,078 residents of Cumberland County have CLUES library cards.  She said, “We have reciprocal borrowing at this point, but, if we close, the municipal libraries will be burdened by people coming from outside their municipalities.”

The county library administers the CLUES and is its headquarters.  Naturally, that means it manages most of the technological infrastructure “for the eight CLUES libraries as well as the federal E-rate discounts,” asKelley explained.

Matt Zager wrote in TheDailyJournal.com (“A Gannet Company”) “With Cumberland County Library in danger of closing, a library official is raising concerns the county freeholders’ liaison isn’t attending Library Commission meetings because he wants the facility shut down.”His article “Amid library closure talks, freeholder rep is absent” was posted on December 19, 2011.

Zager quoted Mary Moyer, Vice President of the Library Commission, as saying “It almost appears that he just quietly wants us to go away,” of Freeholder Samuel “Sam” L. Fiocchi, Sr., Chairman of the Department of Public Property & Personnel,the county government’s liaison to the library.  Fiocchi did not dispute he had attended only three of nine commission meetings in 2011, the last of which was in March, when it became public knowledge that the Cumberland County government was considering the closure of the CCL.

Fiocchi told TheDailyJournal.com that he had not made a decision yet but he had raised questions about the CCL.  “A lot of people in Vineland don’t even know there is a county library,” Fiocchi told TheDailyJournal.com.  “They say, ‘I pay taxes for my library in Vineland, and I pay taxes for a county library as well?’” Fiocchi has only attended three of nine library commission meetings this year, Zager reported.

Patricia Tumulty, Executive Director of the New Jersey Library Association, told The Press of Atlantic City that the remaining three (municipal) libraries likely could not handle the added volume of users.  “I’m just really stressed that they think they could do this again,” Ms. Tumulty, a former CCL employee, told The Press of Atlantic City. “That would really be devastating. Most of those libraries are very small, and very limited in what they could do.”