While I'm not a member of any formal "Friends of the Library" charity, I am unfailingly friendly toward libraries as invaluable public institutions.
The difference the local library of my childhood made in my life and literacy is impossible to overstate, and I'm convinced my story continues to play out for millions of others.
As entities, libraries enjoy unusually strong public support. A Pew Research study reported 94 percent of Americans agree that a library enhances a community's quality of life. Legislatures, quorum courts and city halls can only dream of getting that kind of approval rating.
Which is why I'm dismayed with what's going on in Jonesboro involving the Craighead County Library System.
As a longtime political observer, I've developed a few nonpartisan pet peeves, and whether intentionally or not, the ballot initiative to cut the library's millage in half chafes on several of them.
First, last-minute filings seek to bolster a cause on the basis of voter ignorance, which invariably leads to messaging, claims and shallow sound-bites designed for confusion rather than clarity. Especially on complex matters of public funding (ask your co-workers or lunch buddies to define a "mill"), adequate time for discourse and debate is essential.
Added to that peeve is the arbitrary nature of the library millage reduction, which seems to be based mostly on simplistic whole-number subtraction, as if the only option avoiding decimal points or fractional mills is to go from two to one.
Fast-tracking a vote on what can only be characterized as a devastatingly drastic funding cut isn't fair or respectful. No organization or business could operate at anywhere near the same level of performance if it lost half its revenue with only a month's notice.
Even more importantly, no one proposing this would want such a 50 percent loss of income imposed on them in their personal or work life on an Election Day whim--regardless of their savings--without investigation, study and due deliberation on the matter.
The inter-relational dynamic in smaller communities is both a huge advantage and a real blessing, particularly involving public institutions. Unlike big-city bureaucracies, we often know each other; and if we don't, we're close enough to visit and make an introduction, and can usually park close to the front door.
The idea of first talking through a problem with someone, as opposed to leading with coercive legal action, is a foundational cornerstone of courtesy and civility--and needed more now than ever. It doesn't appear that anyone associated with the political organization proposing the millage reduction first spoke with the new library director, who's only been on the job since February.
Perhaps my most grating peeve is cherry-picking numbers or statistics. Professional baseball's Aaron Judge came within a hair's breadth of winning the Triple Crown (leading the league in batting average, home runs and RBIs). But if you rate him solely by strikeouts, he's no all-star.
Focusing solely on millage in comparing libraries is a false premise that leads to false conclusions, because it isn't a uniform measure for function or value. Libraries are publicly funded in different ways, including millages, sales taxes and as city departments. Property values (on which tax millages are based) are the furthest thing from uniform, because they're market- and economy-dependent from county to county.
I drove by the library in Fort Smith last weekend, and then by the one in Jonesboro. That visual disparity is proof alone that mills are completely irrelevant. The art and architecture of Fort Smith's imposing, multi-story 67,000-square-foot structure, which features original sculptures and custom stained-glass, landed it on the cover of the national Library Journal publication.
It doesn't matter that Fort Smith's millage is lower than Jonesboro's, because residents there used sales tax to fund the building of their Taj Mahal library. Sebastian County is only slightly larger than Craighead, but anybody looking at the two libraries would laugh out loud at the suggestion that Jonesboro's funding is higher.
The more accurate measure for library comparisons is what's called "expenditure per capita." It achieves accuracy by using a ratio derived from two uniform measures: a library's budget divided by the population it serves. That's how library funding is compared nationally, and the best way to compare Arkansas libraries as well.
The U.S. average library spending per person is $41.
When I took the Craighead County Library's 2022 budget and divided it by the county's 2021 Census population, that number was--coincidentally? fatefully? ironically?--also $41.
This single piece of information, so easily attained if public interest and quality-of-life amenities are prioritized correctly, should shape and frame the entire discussion of what proper funding of the Craighead County Library (and any library) ought to look like.
That's what the library deserves. And what county residents deserve, too.
All the money and energy being spent arguing over a 50 percent funding cut vote could be going toward an in-depth study and master plan for making Craighead County's library the best it can be.
Why that isn't happening is a good question. More to come as I research further to see what kind of answers emerge.
Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.