Annette John-Hall: Open libraries, open minds

The library saved me.

Not to sound too melodramatic, but it's true. There's no telling where I'd be without the Berkeley Public Library, South Berkeley branch.

I fit the profile of so many city kids: Loves to read. Loves to write. Comes from modest means. Needs a place to focus.

The solution? The library. My neighborhood branch allowed me to check out books free, not to mention gave my mother peace of mind - all within walking distance.

So naturally, when I heard that Mayor Nutter had decided to close 11 libraries in response to the city's budget crisis, I couldn't help but think: There has got to be a better way.

"Look, I'm a city kid, too," the mayor told me yesterday, attempting to make his case for a decision that has been grounds for citywide protests. "I know how important [libraries] are. But we're dealing with a $108 million deficit this fiscal year alone. We have to take drastic steps."

Still, the way Mayor Nutter talks, it sounds as if he believes libraries have saving powers, too.

He grew up at 55th and Larchwood in West Philly and "was always at the Cobbs Creek branch," he says. "I read a lot. I would take five or six books out and sit on the steps outside my house and read them."

His love of reading has obviously rubbed off on daughter Olivia.

"I still remember taking her to the Central branch to get her library card when she was 5 or 6 years old," he says. "I have never seen a kid so happy."

Apart from laying off 220 city employees, the mayor says, closing the libraries is the most "personally difficult thing I've had to do."

But, he added, "There is a fundamental mind shift that has to take place. We have to think about doing things in a different way. There can be other safe havens in addition to a library."

Like portable bookmobiles, which the city is looking into buying? Traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood, they're a little like the book equivalent of the ice cream truck rolling through.

Problem is, once you get yourself together and run out to meet it, the truck might be gone.

To understand how vital a library is to the life of a neighborhood, all you have to do is go to the Eastwick branch - slated for closure in Southwest Philly - between 3 and 6 p.m.

The cozy haven on Island Avenue teemed with children doing homework or at the computers. A line of young readers waited to check out books.

A few grown-ups sat in the adult section. One looked as if she was going over her resume with someone.

All parts of the community came together, right there at the library.

When Eastwick closes in mid-December, "kids are going to have to go further for the homework club," says David Preston, of the LEAP After-School Program, which provides homework assistance and other skills and activities for students. "They'll have to go to Paschalville at 70th and Woodland. It's quite a distance - plus, that area is a little dangerous."

About 1.8 miles, down a busy boulevard. And that's one way.

Which would create a huge inconvenience and worry for mothers such as Tawana Turner, who brings her 7-year-old son to the library to check out books.

"My son's school doesn't have a library," Turner said, "and most of the schools around here don't have libraries."

Not only that, "what if the kids don't have a ride to get to 70th and Woodland?" Turner asks. "People pay taxes to have a library in their neighborhood, not in the radius of their neighborhood."

Starting next week, the mayor will conduct a series of town meetings to discuss the budget cuts, a process many complained was done without the transparency that he made a campaign promise.

"I said in September and October that everything was on the table," he says. "Everything meant everything."

As the city bleeds red - ink, not Phillies - the mayor has had to make some hard decisions. And he's taken the lead by offering to take a 10 percent hit on his $186,000 salary.

And, yes, even after the cuts, Philadelphia's library system will still have 42 branches - more than any major city.

But in a city with an abysmal literacy rate, a dropout rate of 50 percent, and public schools with hardly any libraries, isn't one closed one too many?

Just asking.