Tauranga City Council want to charge adults a fee to borrow books from the public library. The fee would be 50 cents for each book but would increase to 80 cents in three years time.
Libraries get most of their money from rates. Everyone who owns a house or a flat pays rates to the council. These rates are for city roads, footpaths, rubbish collection, water and sewerage, parks and libraries. Tauranga is about 3 hours by car south east of Auckland. It has a population of nearly 120,000 people. It has four public libraries and a mobile library which travels around the city. The public libraries cost $6.7 million a year and rates pay most of that cost – $6 million. The Council wants the libraries to reduce the cost to ratepayers.
However, no other public library in New Zealand charges for books. It is true that some libraries charge for new books, DVDs and CDs; however, most books are free.
New Zealand has excellent public libraries and they are very popular. Most are modern, attractive with friendly and helpful staff. Most public libraries in the bigger cities have on-line catalogues, free internet, books in Maori and other languages and they are open seven days a week. In New Zealand, our population of 4 million people borrow about 50 million books a year from public libraries. The libraries are busy places. In Tauranga, 60% of residents use the libraries.
At the moment, this idea to charge a fee is a plan only. Many residents are angry about this plan. The Tauranga City Council said that people will have a chance to discuss the plan before the councillors vote on it in May.
Public libraries are often used by those who can’t afford books so this is DISCRIMINATION!!!!! I hope residents are strong in their opposition to these changes. Is reading only for the elite???
there will be a Public Meeting on Thursday 1 April 12.30-1.30pm at the Elizabeth St Community Centre –
169 Elizabeth St (opposite the Tga yoga Centre in town by the NZ Flag Roundabout). Mayor Stuart Crosby has been invited and should, we hope, be there. this will be a chance to be heard and galvanise support around the issue.
please come, please spread the word, and please fill out a submission form against the proposal from this Monday 22 March. submission forms available at: http://www.tauranga.govt.nz/submission.aspx from monday morning
Being recently back from living overseas I was astounded to find my local library charges for reserving books, extending loan times and for bestsellers! The only thing that is still free (and it may not be for long) is to borrow a standard (read not popular or new) book. I pay rates for councils to spend on things I don’t use e.g. playgrounds, rubbish collection (where we live we have to pay a private contractor for this), out of area road improvements and so on. I don’t complain (until now)because I like to think that my rates contribute to something I do use – the library system but apparently not any more…. I have to pay for this too. Where is all my rate money going then?