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7 <br /> run that facility's Library Arts Program. I am here to object to the proposed closure of the <br /> Carrboro Branch Library located in the McDougle Schools Media Center. Fifteen years ago <br /> when the Carrboro Branch library opened in the McDougle Middle School in Carrboro, it was <br /> brought to the Friend's attention that only 2% of school-aged children ever went into an art <br /> gallery. With that in mind and the fact that the Carrboro Branch Library was to be situated in a <br /> school media center, the Carrboro Branch Library Arts Program was launched. <br /> Over the past fifteen years and using the walls of the Media center/Carrboro Branch <br /> library as an art gallery, the Friends have staged over eighty exhibitions all benefitting the <br /> community at large not to mention close to 200,000 McDougle Schools' (middle and <br /> elementary) students, staff and faculty. This artist run program has shown the work of over <br /> 1,000 artists, trained curators and launched careers. All the artists have given their time and <br /> work freely at an "in kind" cost of over two million dollars. The program has won state awards <br /> and was first runner up in the nation for a Friends of USA Libraries award for the best small <br /> library program in the nation. The standards of the Program's work is high and exhibitions <br /> range from themed shows, such as our current series, "Global Perspectives" to issue exhibits <br /> such as "Natural Balance," our 2006 exhibit on obesity and public health. Now we are being <br /> told that all this does not count. The proposal is that the art program, library with its 22,000 <br /> books and 16 computers are to be done away with, the collection dismantled and the librarian <br /> moved to Hillsborough. So the Carrboro Branch Library serving a catchment area of 35,000 <br /> will no longer exist to serve the citizens of South west Orange County and all of the County's <br /> arts community. <br /> If the library closes no one will see our fall 2009 exhibition on climate change and polar <br /> scenery, a collaborative effort which you will soon be told about. Neither will the community <br /> see our proposed exhibition in the Spring of 2010 on Mayan culture which impinges on the <br /> cultural roots of many of our library patrons. And if the Library is to close, how are we to <br /> proceed with our Annual School of Library Science Scholarship which the Friends fund each <br /> year for a needy student intern? We should be interviewing now but we have no clue as to our <br /> fate. <br /> Last Sunday, May 3, was Carrboro Day celebrating the Town's diverse community. At <br /> the Friends book sale, anxious residents, on learning of the proposed closure of the Carrboro <br /> Branch Library, lined up for four hours and at times, five deep, to sign this petition which I am <br /> about to hand to you. None of them as taxpayers had been told officially that their library was <br /> threatened by closure. People working at the library cannot tell them — and had they not <br /> attended Carrboro Day they would have possibly turned up at the Carrboro Branch Library one <br /> day to find it gone. These petition signatures represent their concern, outrage, and love for the <br /> library. You will see lots of children's signatures —they asked to sign the petition too. And how <br /> will people in Cedar Grove learn that their library is to be done away with? How have they <br /> been told — or have they? <br /> You have a difficult job and I appreciate your great dilemma, but we are talking about <br /> people's lives here, people without computers and without home libraries who are underserved <br /> by inadequate evening bus routes to libraries even here in south Orange. We owe all <br /> taxpayers a service that keeps them connected to the world and enriches their minds and <br /> lives. We also owe them a continuous service. Let us all try to help each other with some <br /> creative thinking. If you close the Carrboro Branch Library now for$37,000, it will cost you <br /> hundreds of thousands of dollars to restart a comparable facility. The collection and art gallery <br /> will be gone, the goodwill will be gone — and the Friends will be gone. How will you proceed <br /> with a support system for the south west Orange regional branch library whose CIP you are <br /> consenting to tonight if there is a disconnect? Please think about this seriously in terms of a <br /> cost-benefit analysis and not as a simple line item in a 2009 budget." <br />