To the editor:

Can the Tiverton Public Library get a fair budget from a Budget Committee that brings bias to their table?  Attend, or watch their meetings via YouTube,and see for yourselves. 

Disrespect,disparaging remarks tossed about, manipulation of facts and figures in bar graphs and charts that confuse and often misinform the public, and, at their March 9 meeting, add their blatant attempts to micromanage your public library. 

The library administration and staff of Tiverton Public Library bring cumulative expertise in their field to their customers and public and have done an amazing job at taking library services from a 1938 building with all its challenges and limitations to a 21st century community library where services have exploded in growth by doubling, and sometimes tripling, in areas of circulation of materials (books and media), programming, computer usage etc. 

The only area that has not grown is staffing; which currently has ‘one-half of a position more’ than was employed at the 1938 Essex Public Library.  Our collective library staff proved to Tiverton that the vision of library as a gathering place for babies through elderly, be it for traditional checkout of books and media, attendance at programs for all ages, use of computers, technology instruction and assistance, or simply library as ‘meeting place’ has worked.  

The library is a vibrant, growing entity in this town. The suggestion by certain budget committee members to cut staffing and shave hours, that now allow the library to operate efficiently, effectively and functionally, while maintaining a measure of public safety, should cause townspeople, especially  voters, great concern as to their motive. 

Tiverton Public Library is not the library it was in 2011.  Six years down the road, in 2017, we exist as a 21st century library that has proudly and successfully grown into the community library that you love and use.  Tiverton Library needs its supporters to pay attention to risky measures some budget committee members are proposing that would drastically change the library from what it has grown to be today.  Library lovers, it is time to speak out to preserve what you voted for. 

Janet Linhares

Children’s librarian

Tiverton Public Library