LIBRARY PROPOSAL NEEDS
CRD BOARD ATTENTION
by former CRD Director Dietrich Luth
Contrary to the Driftwood’s misleading headline, the Salt Spring Library is not soliciting tax dollars from Salt Springers at this time. It is only asking for public consultation on the subject and to submit a proposal to the CRD Board that would initiate a counter petition to ask Salt Springers whether they are prepared to fund the library from local taxes.
The current CRD Director is blocking this process and typically redirecting her responsibilities away from herself by confounding it with other issues and refusing to submit the proposal to the CRD board on behalf of her constituents. No proposal necessarily needs the endorsement of the local CRD Director to be presented at the board, although it always helps.
As my past experience as CRD Director tells me, no director can really hold up anything from Board consideration if the people are willing to lobby them to look at it. It ill-behooves any CRD Director to stand in the way of an inexpensive and immediate democratic consultation process that indicates the intent of the electorate to consider taxation of a local service.
Furthermore, a counter petition shouldn’t be linked with any question of municipal incorporation or other current local government ventures. This is a clever attempt to confuse the issue and the electorate. If the counter petition fails, then, and only then, would the expense of a referendum on library funding be made necessary. And the inanity of suggesting multiple referenda on one ballot is a first class ticket to losing all of them!
It is my recommendation, as it was as far back as 1994, that the library be in compliance with the current Public Library Act, being that it is the only BC library that doesn’t meet the Act’s terms to qualify for public funding.
The library having received a one time grant under Kelly Booth’s new Grant-in-Aid rules is in the awkward position of not being qualified for those public funds again (unless of course the library and other adversely affected parties are prepared to challenge the ultra vires character of these illegitimate rules which were actually never vetted by the CRD Board).
Folks, if you want a library that can meet the challenges of the information age, lobby all CRD Directors including your local Director to put the Library funding proposal before the board in time for its first meeting in September. You have a month to do it!
copyright 1998 Dietrich Luth
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