Southeast Liberty Street on Sunday afternoon was filled with friendly honks from passing cars and cheers, chants and conversations as around 100 community members gathered to support the Salem Public Library.
Their colorful homemade signs showed a variety of designs and slogans with a shared message: don’t cut the library’s budget any further.
The rally, organized by librarian Hannah Bostrom and Salemites Sadie Verville and Kelsey Dawn, came as city leaders are close to releasing a proposed budget to cut millions from city services next year to address a deficit.
Library leaders in 2023 stopped filling vacant positions in anticipation of further budget cuts, resulting in the main library branch closing Sundays and cutting evening hours. Service at the west Salem branch was reduced from five days a week to two.
City Manager Keith Stahley is building his budget on a plan that would cut eight more positions from the library.
“We are very passionate about our work with the city, and the library in general. And it’s been a really difficult, upsetting process watching this all unfold,” Bostrom said. “The potential to lose eight more of our coworkers, people that we care so deeply about and who add so much to this community, it’s just unacceptable for us at this point.”
Bostrom said her goal with the rally and community organizing is to engage with the city council and city manager’s office to ask if further cuts to the library are the route they would like to take. Handouts for attendees included a list of upcoming budget committee and council meetings, and a suggestion to attend the upcoming Revenue Task Force town halls.
“People are just going to have a lot less of a library than what they currently have. And I mean, emotionally, the staff are struggling very hard,” Bostrom said. “We’re pretty over it.”
The community organizers led a surge of public support for the library, with over a dozen giving testimony at the last city council meeting on March 27.
Kathy Knock, president of AFSCME Local 2067 which represents library employees, said in an email, and later clarified, that vacancies were cut in the current budget and that layoffs are likely if staffing is reduced in the year ahead. Union-represented positions are required by contract to be laid off in inverse seniority, with the newest hires cut first.
The proposed cuts, Esqueda told Salem Reporter, would mean further reduction in operating hours and services, and longer wait times.
“A library of this size and serving the population we do requires more staffing. Other comparable libraries with similar size, services, and circulation have minimum 64 people staffing the library working either part-time or full-time. After these reductions, the Salem Public Library will have only 30,” she said.
Sage Ingalsbe, a student at Early College High School attending the rally, said the looming possibility of a teachers’ strike, which was averted when union and district leaders struck a deal, made it clear that most Salem students have nowhere to gather or study outside of school. They also said the institutional knowledge libraries have and share is essential.
“Supporting the library is a big deal to me. I printed my first resume at the library, I printed my cover letter. I check out books all the time. Without the library, I wouldn’t be the person that I am,” Ingalsbe said.
Several attendees, including retired librarian Alice LaViolette, said that they see the library as an essential service. In addition to books, she said there’s internet access, research tools, databases and knowledgeable staff to answer questions..
“The library is a public utility,” LaViolette said.
An Oregon outlier
Stahley plans to present his proposed budget to the city’s budget committee on Wednesday, April 17. The committee will continue to deliberate until July, and the city council ultimately votes on approving a budget. Eight of nine Salem city councilors, who also sit on the committee, told Salem Reporter they will not consider a budget that closes the library entirely.
But most said further library cuts are likely.
Stahley’s previous budget options detailed $1.2 million in further library cuts. That total includes wages, benefits, paid leave and other expenses for eight employees, according to city librarian Bridget Esqueda.
Salem’s library is already among the worst-funded in Oregon, ranking 112th out of 136 in per-person revenue in 2022-23, according to Buzzy Nielsen, library support program manager for the State Library of Oregon.
Salem’s library spends about $33 per person they serve per year, with about 180,000 people in the service area.
It’s an outlier among Oregon cities. The other 24 worst-funded libraries in the state serve fewer than 30,000 people, Nielsen said, and are predominantly in rural areas.
The Eugene Public Library, which serves a comparable population, spends about $85.50 per year. Jackson County’s library system spends nearly twice as much as Salem per person.
Longtime advocates for the library, former State Librarian Jim Scheppke and Lois Stark, former chair of the Salem Public Library Board, attended the rally and set up a table for their new organization, “Fund Our Libraries.”
Salem’s library gets money from the city’s general fund, which comes from property taxes Salemites pay. The fund also pays for city police, fire and other general operations.
“We need some dedicated funding for the library, because we don’t want to have to compete with all the other departments. Then we don’t have to keep making cuts and cuts and cuts,” Stark said.
Scheppke pointed to other cities, like Beaverton, Hillsboro and Bend, who use either a local option levy or a library taxing district to fund the services. Salem’s previous city librarian, Kim Carroll, left for a job at Beaverton’s library which has double the budget but is also facing cuts amid a deficit.
In November, Corvallis voters approved a renewal on their five-year levy funding libraries, parks and social services.
“That tells you what it takes. They all have adequate funding that’s stable,” Scheppke said, with more open hours than Salem’s library. He said Salem doesn’t have one because “we haven’t asked yet.”
He said the new group will continue to educate people, raise awareness about the library funding issues and to push the Revenue Task Force to seek a solution for the library.
Kellie Thoelecke, who held a sign saying “Save our libraries,” said that there wasn’t adequate communication about the previous reduction in services before they happened. She said she tried to open the doors on Sunday to find them locked.
“I’m here to make sure everyone knows what’s going on, and to get involved,” she said.
Thoelecke works as a therapist, and said a lot of her clients need the resources the library offers.
Thoelecke’s friend, Taylor Rehkop, is an intern at the library and a student at Western Oregon University. She said staff are being asked to do the same amount of work with less time to do it. She held a sign saying “Honk if you think it’s BS that the library’s closed today,” to which many drivers obliged.
“I think it’s a little ridiculous how disproportionate these cuts are affecting the library. I think it’s very shortsighted, and it’s going to hurt the community more than help it,” she said. “What kind of message does that send on a national level, that a state capital can’t support a healthy library system?”
Managing Editor Rachel Alexander contributed reporting.
UPDATE: This story has been updated with new clarifying information from Kathy Knock. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story had an incorrect name spelling and school for Taylor Rehkop. Salem Reporter apologizes for the error.s
Contact reporter Abbey McDonald: [email protected] or 503-575-1251
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Abbey McDonald joined the Salem Reporter in 2022. She previously worked as the business reporter at The Astorian, where she covered labor issues, health care and social services. A University of Oregon grad, she has also reported for the Malheur Enterprise, The News-Review and Willamette Week.
