Sullivan signs petition to decrease Jonesboro library funding

A state senator recognized for attacking lecturers is amongst these Jonesboro-area residents working to defund the Craighead County/Jonesboro Public Library.

State Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Jonesboro) not solely signed a petition searching for to slash the library funding from two mills to at least one mill but in addition circulated it to get extra signatures. Amongst these he acquired was his spouse Maria Sullivan.

Additionally among the many petition signers and circulators was Janice Prather Porter, who’s operating for the Jonesboro Metropolis Council. Porter’s Fb web page features a image of herself posing with Sullivan, who endorsed her marketing campaign.

Library Director Vanessa Adams informed KAIT-TV not too long ago that the defunding measure resulted from controversy over a Pleasure show within the Jonesboro library greater than a 12 months in the past.

“If this occurs, we’ll lose all of our programming,” she stated. “We do outreach to nursing houses, to daycare amenities, we’ll lose all of that. We’ll lose our summer time studying program. We’ll lose our after-school applications. We’ll lose our e book golf equipment. We’ll lose staff.” However the defunders “need to punish us,” Adams stated.

Supporters of gutting the library say 71% of Arkansas counties fund their libraries at 1 mill or much less and say Faulkner and Sebastian counties simply get 1 mill. These identical library haters acknowledge that 13 % of the state’s libraries fund at 2 mills or extra. What they don’t point out is that it prices cash to run a very good library and that Arkansas drastically wants to extend, not decrease, its academic choices. And a few components of the state are attempting to just do that. Voters, for instance, accredited a rise to three.7 mills in 2016 for the Fayetteville Public Library, the most effective I’ve visited wherever. The Jonesboro library can also be spectacular, offering books and different companies to residents at a time when many lower- and middle-income individuals can’t afford to purchase these companies.

However vengeance is motivated by anger, not by a want to teach the general public.

The defunders additionally say the Jonesboro-based library has $6 million money readily available. Nice, it’s going to wish all of it very quickly. When the state had a surplus, the far proper was thrilled so long as it didn’t go to instructor salaries or poor individuals.

Sullivan, it’s possible you’ll recall, requested the Craighead County Quorum Court docket to cut back the library’s funding final 12 months due to the Pleasure show. He additionally criticized Arkansas’s underpaid teaches earlier this 12 months for complaining about having to spend their very own cash on college provides. “Ought to the legislature be regulating Kleenex, paper towels, handy-wipes and crayon spending?” he requested.

On a hopeful be aware, a read-in is deliberate Oct. 10 from 3 p.m.-7 p.m.

Residents are urged to carry a e book or a interest like crochet work and a garden chair and arrange alongside the sidewalks of downtown Jonesboro from the library to the courthouse to the municipal constructing.

“Let’s ship the message that our library is beloved and guarded and WILL NOT be defunded!” a Fb put up selling the read-in says.