Will the Pomona Public Library be closed?

June 22, 2012 1:35 PM PT

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The Pomona Public Library dodged a bullet Monday when a City Council budget vote was postponed. Facing an unexpected funding gap, the city was poised to close the doors of its only public library.

The reprieve may not last long. The vote was postponed only until June 25.

Library supporters are urging Pomona residents to attend that council meeting. Using the Facebook page Don’t Close the Pomona Library!! for organizing, they’ve posted fliers and suggested distributing them to neighbors and friends who may not have Internet access. In part, the fliers read, ‘Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries!’

Inland Valley Daily Bulletin columnist Dave Allen has been spreading the news of his support. ‘For years I’ve used the Pomona library for research purposes, and it may be my favorite of all the Inland Valley’s libraries,’ he wrote. This week, he finally signed up for a library card there.

Two weeks ago, library employees learned that the budget gap might mean closing the facility’s doors. The council is to vote on a budget plan that would impose cuts that include closing the library and reducing the city’s fire contract. Of the city’s expected 29 layoff notices, 15 are expected to go to the library’s staff. The council meeting on the cuts is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m.

The city of Pomona, which is home to about 160,000 residents, has just the one public library. If the library’s closure is approved, it will shut its doors in August and keep them closed for at least a year. Only if its funding is restored in a future budget vote would the library return.

‘Closing down a library is the destruction of a community,’ Mickey Gallivan, president of the Historical Society of Pomona Valley, told the Daily Bulletin. ‘If you want to destroy a civilization, you burn their books and you close the library.’

Looking at libraries in Mexico, and at the Mexican Revolution

What’s worse library behavior: watching porn or stabbing someone?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

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Carolyn Kellogg

Carolyn Kellogg is a prize-winning writer who served as Books editor of the Los Angeles Times for three years. She joined the L.A. Times in 2010 as staff writer in Books and left in 2018. In 2019, she was a judge of the National Book Award in Nonfiction. Prior to coming to The Times, Kellogg was editor of LAist.com and the web editor of the public radio show Marketplace. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in English from the University of Southern California.