Letter: Support Erin Pryor for Deschutes library board

Published 5:13 am Sunday, April 30, 2017

I would like to thank The Bulletin for its endorsement interview process. I appreciate bringing attention to the struggles our libraries currently face. I’m glad the lack of functional event-space availability was highlighted by both candidates; I think everyone knows our library district can do better, especially considering the prime real estate locations it controls.

I would like to take exception with the claim that new taxpayer-funded construction will solve our library’s service woes, including the inability to better monetize event space. As detailed in the district’s own “2016 Results Policy Monitoring,” attendance in library buildings is flat over the past five years or more, as is the number of library-card holders.

Even as rapid growth is occurring in the county, our library district serves. Although, sadly, there are no new library users in our expanding district, the board has begun adding construction projects into the budget.

This evaluation also notes numerous “challenges” related to staffing and operations unavailability, across most disciplines including school district outreach, Latino outreach, staff professional improvement, and programming quality/quantity.

For example, there are 11 local schools on the waiting list for our LYNX book-loan program. That is the type of unacceptable service level that needs to be fixed first, for our kids and their parents.

We also need to enable online library card registration, something not currently available, finally allowing working, rural and single-parent families to become customers, even if they are unable to visit a branch during business hours.

If the library district knows it has serious service challenges and flat user-ship, both of which directly affect our school kids, I do not understand why service improvements are not a higher priority than new construction, for my neighbors’ (and my) hard-earned tax dollars. Our main growth metrics are in fields like internet usage and e-book checkouts; we need more internet space more than we need more building space, too.

I pledge to make sure we fix our libraries before we expand our libraries. The taxpayers deserve the best, and according to the district’s own evaluations, they aren’t getting it.

It seems many library functions are being curtailed due to short staffing, and there is little focus on expanding non-tax income with higher quality programs or event availability.

I’m proud to be a part of Manzama’s effort to revolutionize how clients interact with and retrieve information, and I want to bring that same skill set to our library district. Our current board averages over 60 years in age, while the average customer is well under 35.

I hope the South County trusts me to expand attendance at the La Pine and Sunriver branches and improve our libraries for all voters and citizens, instead of just an elite group.

— Erin Pryor lives in Bend and is a candidate for a position on the board of the Deschutes Public Library system.