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Keep the Zephyr library
We were going to talk this week about how we had to improvise during the postal lockout, how our friends and families came to the rescue and made sure that most of you got last week’s Cosmos (if we missed you, there are still plenty of copies here at the office). But as it turns out, we’ve had to hand-deliver the paper again this week, so we’ll wait until next issue to tell you the full story of that adventure, and to thank all of our deliverers properly.
This week, there’s an issue that might seem unimportant in the greater scheme of things, but in a township that cherishes its small-town character, we think it’s vital. And in the hamlet of Zephyr, it’s fundamental. As Roger Varley reports on page 11, the Friends of the Zephyr Library faced a frustrating Library Board last week, and to their great credit, remained cool. Perhaps too cool.
The Board resisted appointing a Zephyr person to its membership apparently because they felt that person might be too biased on the issue of whether or not to close the Zephyr library. Of course they would; that’s the point of them being there! At present, and for as long as Scott and Uxbridge townships have been joined (since 1973), the Zephyr library has been part of the Uxbridge library system, the only branch library in the municipality. It only makes sense that a member of the Zephyr community be on the Library Board. The people of Zephyr have had a library for a very long time, and they deserve a strong voice in any debate to close it down.
When Council first broached the idea of closing the branch, they did so because of the perception that the library was not very well used. Advocates contested that assertion, and collected the signatures of more than 200 people in the community who said the library was important to them and their families. That’s a difficult number to ignore.
We hope that the Township will ultimately decide to continue to operate the library in Zephyr. But if they do not, we would suggest an alternative to closing it: turn it over to the community. Give the land, the building and the current Zephyr collection to the Friends for a dollar, and put the challenge of operating it in the hands of the 200 people who say it’s vital to them.
What the Township wants is to avoid the annual cost of running the Zephyr library. But it costs them nothing to donate it to the hamlet, or to continue to allow Zephyr residents full access to the far greater resources in Uxbridge. And if the library is indeed important to the people of Zephyr, they will find innovative ways of paying for it, with volunteer staff, donations to the collection, in-kind maintenance of the building.
Like other municipalities across Canada, Uxbridge is looking at saving tax dollars by divesting itself of properties that cost it money. But that doesn’t need to spell the end for the Zephyr library.
