People in St. Charles County are protesting library officials' plan to close three of 11 library branches within the next year.
The Kisker branch in unincorporated St. Charles County and the McClay branch in St. Charles will close on July 30 unless the library board votes to keep the doors open. The Deer Run branch in north O’Fallon, Missouri, is scheduled to close next year, and its building will be transformed into a warehouse.
The possible loss of community libraries led more than 100 people to protest at a board meeting Tuesday at Middendorf-Kredell Library in O’Fallon. Jenna Roberson, a library patron from Wentzville who organized the protest through social media, told the board's members that they needed to find a way to save the library branches.
“As long as you're not being shady, let's work together,” Roberson said. “Let's come up with a plan. But if you try to start doing things that harm our community because you're trying to shield yourself from something, now we're going to burn it all down.”
Board members will meet again on June 18, after members postponed on a proposal to cut 64 jobs across the library system and increase the salaries of remaining employees by 18% on average in the coming fiscal year. The new salary structure depends in part on the savings that would come from closing the three libraries.
St. Charles City-County Library CEO Jason Kuhl announced the potential closures and other changes during a special meeting last week. Kuhl said closing the branches would allow the library system to focus more on larger, busier libraries.
“It's not necessarily a revenue problem,” Kuhl said. “If we had an influx of money we’d still be making the same recommendations because this is really about how the library operates based upon the challenges and ways that our public are using the library and the changing way people are consuming information.”
The St. Charles City-County libraries had a 5% budget surplus last fiscal year, Kuhl said.
Roberson said she thought ongoing renovations, new books and materials were signs the library system is stable.
“I don’t think any of us necessarily suspected branch closures, especially with this little of notice and this quick of a deadline,” she said.
When more than 40 people packed into the meeting room, librarians opened a live-broadcast viewing area in the library. Julie Jackson, a former St. Charles-City County librarian, asked board members to consider staff opinions before closing doors.
“I found my people at the library,” Jackson said. “If you shutter these three libraries, you are erecting barriers to so much more than books. The worst part about it, you haven't actually included staff in decision-making in years. Everyone on your staff knows that ultimately their voice doesn't count. In my last few years, I had multiple managers tell me to stop caring so much, because it wasn't going to make a difference.”
Board member Buddy Hardin proposed they close one library and reallocate funds to pay for salary increases.
“If we're eliminating one library and 20 positions that are on a budget that we're not even paying for, then the amount of money you keep from closing that one library — maybe that's enough to bring up the salaries of a lot of the people,” Hardin said.
People who attended the meeting urged the board to consider how much the library branches benefit the community.
The libraries are an important resource for low-income families, said Aimee Robertson, a behavior analyst for Missouri First Steps in St. Charles.
“We have a number of families who don’t have a means of transportation,” Robertson, who said. “So we have families that are depending on the library. When it gets hot they don't have air conditioning in their trailers and they go to the library to give their kids a safe place to cool off.”
