City Government
Meridian Library Good For Boise
October 16, 2006 
If the proposed $9.5 million bond for a new Meridian Library passes, it could be a benefit for Boiseans as well.
Just take your Boise library card to Meridian and use it free in a great facility paid for by the Meridian Library District Patrons–thanks to an agreement already in place.
A well organized “consortium” which includes most of the libraries in the southwest corner of the state allows patrons of one district to use their cards in another district and even return a book to a third district.
Thanks to on-line requests and a cooperative program, people in Meridian can borrow books from Boise or even Twin Falls and vice versa.
The GUARDIAN has proposed several times that a countywide library district would be an effective way of providing library services since all of us who live in Boise, Meridian, Eagle, Star, Garden City, and Kuna also live in Ada County.
We say pool the resources–and the debt–and build a unified system. Unfortunately political reality sets in and there is no support among the politicos.
Boise voters turned down a $38 million bond proposal in February and Mayor Bieter seemed to offer some vindication for that vote when he declared that it was an outdated idea from the previous administration. He floated ideas of offering sites in strip malls and said by selling surplus public land they could fund new branches.
Since then BoDo developer Mark Rivers has been trying to get involved with murky plans that would end up with him owning city land and developing it in exchange for a library that would still have to be bought with tax money.
Meanwhile, encourage the folks in Meridian to build a library south of the freeway so we can all enjoy it at their expense.
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Comments & Discussion
Comments are closed for this post.
Oct 16, 2006, 7:33 pm
Pooling the library resources of all the cities and communities in Ada county so that a patron that lives in Boise can use their borrowers card anywhere is a great idea! We don’t need more libraries; we need more cooperation between the bureaucrats in all of Ada county in using already existing libraries to their maximum potential.
Instead, what we have had for too long, is a system where each seperate City in the county wants to establish their own bureaucratic fiefdoms. That winds up costing the taxpayer and depriving them of resources they should be able to use. The same system of multi-use libraries available to all Citizens in the county could,and should, be applied to many other city services to all residents of Ada county… a real tax saving step and a great way to use already existing resources to the max!
Oct 16, 2006, 10:07 pm
Ada County already has one too many single purpose government entities, so I propose a swap where we give the cities back their roads and the Ada County Highway District can take over the libraries.
Oct 17, 2006, 12:18 am
I see that the “Lynx Consortium” seems to have already solved the library shortage, apparently without apparent governmental assistance. If I want a particular book I can check my library in Eagle. If that book is not in stock the folks there will order it for me and advise by email when it has arrived. I can then put a hold on it for a certain number of days until I can check it out. The library will also email me two days before my books are due back to remind me to return them or renew my loan.
Sure beats the old 8th & Washington system !! (Actually I loved that library.) The library folks seem to have a life of their own and are doing well, although I guess that more physical buildings are needed from time to time and have to be paid for through taxes. The library system in this country is one of the most wonderful and under appreciated resources we have developed. Tell your local librarian how much you love her/him.
Oct 22, 2006, 11:01 pm
The library cooperation already in place could well serve as a model for city-county government. If we really want to save the tax-paying public some money and any excessive over-lap of services we could abolish either the county or the city governments and have only one. And, while we’re at it, let’s reduce the number of counties.
Counties were formed a long time ago based on how long it would take a “resonable person” to get to the local seat of government. With modern roads, transportation and electronic communication those distances mean very little today, so let’s dump the outdated and out-moded system and get something more streamlined and cost effective.