The Cochrane Public Library is asking for your help to — as CEO Christina Blazecka puts it –educate town council on the library’s importance from the standpoint of the user and the entire community.
At a budget meeting Tuesday at 6:00pm, council is expected to deal with a proposal to cut $100,000 from its contribution to library operations.
Blazecka says that’s one third of what her facility now gets from the town.
So she’s asking Cochrane residents to write e-mails, talk to their councillors and attend the meeting to show how well the library is supported.
“The library, over an average of the last five years,” she recites from statistics, “runs about 27,000 people come through the library in a year.”
That’s a lot for a population of 5,000 people.
Blazecka says that like so many Canadian libraries, hers is a community hub, and does a lot of programming and outreach.
“Our programming is based off of our community survey that we’ve done,” she states, “which proved that we were very much within what our community is requesting of our library.”
Blazecka says the loss of $100,000 would mean drastic cuts to staff, hours and programs.