At the Evanston Public Library’s South Branch, students with disabilities browse for books alongside residents of a nearby special needs home. Mothers with strollers seek the assistance of librarians. At the end of February, this community center will cease to exist.
The city cut funding to the library branches in the 2011 budget, which takes effect in March. The previous budget also included the cut, which has been debated for years, but Evanston Public Library Friends persuaded the city to fund the two branches through August of this year, said Ellen Newcomer, the president of Evanston Public Library Friends. The library will then have to find its own funding.
The funding will go mainly to the North Branch of the library, 2026 Central St., EPL Branch Manager Connie Heneghan said.
The library rents the South Branch location’s building, 949 Chicago Ave., which is only open four days a week due to a lack of funding. After continual threats of closure, the building’s landlord terminated the branch’s lease. The branch will close Feb. 26. Evanston Public Library Friends is focusing its efforts on finding a new location for the South Branch, Newcomer said.
“You see everyone in the neighborhood using the branch,” Newcomer said. “It’s a place of vitality and love.”
Under the Illinois Local Library Act, libraries should either operate completely independently or as quasi-municipal entities, where they work with the local city but set their own budget. Most libraries operate on this model, but EPL is entirely dependent on the city, Newcomer said.
“It’s an interesting system and one our city has simply ignored for decades,” she said.
The 2010 fiscal year budget allotted $4.2 million for the library to operate its main location and two branches. In 2011 that number dropped to $3.7 million, but the fiscal year will be 3 months shorter. Skokie, whose library sets its own budget independent of the city, has a budget of $13 million.
The library board is transitioning this year to become quasi-municipal and passed its own budget last fall preserving the branches. However, the Library Act will not be in effect until next year, so the city disregarded the library’s budget, Newcomer said.
Evanston Public Library Friends raised almost $160,000 in private donations, most of which will be used to help fund the South Branch’s transition to a new location. The library board is working with the organization to find a suitable interim location, Heneghan said.
Newcomer said it is important to keep the South branch open because it brings the neighborhood together. For this reason, Evanston Public Library Friends hopes to open another branch on the West side of Evanston to help create a more cohesive community, she said.
A West branch was opened in 1975 but closed six years later due to poor circulation. Newcomer said this can be avoided if the library board tailors the branch to the needs of the community.
“It’s the sort of thing you don’t build in a day, ” she said. “You take your time and build carefully.”
