State of the States

Okay everybody,

Here is the highlight from this presentation. Vote No on Question Three! It will have a very negative impact on us. We in the public libraries will suffer if Question Three is passed and the sales tax is reduced from 6 1/2 % to 3%. There would be an across the board 28% reduction (discretionary) READ painful as in bleeding as in we don't want it.

Rob Meier from the Mass Board of Library Commissioners was the person speaking about the state of the State of Massachusetts.

He reminded us that we have lost about 38% of our funding which meant, as we all know, that we went from six regional library systems to one.

The number of staff in the regional system has been reduced by about one half. The two regional locations are Waltham and Waitely.

I won't go into Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont except to say that many of the states are working on mapping and Broadband projects and that they have suffered severe cuts as well.

We need to remind everybody and anybody of the importance of libraries!

Louise