Libraries need help
Letters to the Editor Thanks given
As executive director of Domestic Violence Services of Fayette County I want to express the thanks of the entire organization to the Fayette community for the heartfelt support that has been given to the organization during this budget delay.
As of this writing we still have no word on when state dollars will be released. Yet there have been many things to celebrate during layoffs and uncertainties.
Our Annual Purple Tie Ball brought not only a night of dining and dancing, but also considerable generosity from individuals and organizations. Many thanks go to all guests, board members and staff who attended. Thanks to all who made generous donations.
And I salute all who dug deeply to bid in our auctions. Also thank you to Mrs. Sandy Brittingham for her skills as an auctioneer who enhanced our fundraising totals.
The Uniontown School District supported us by providing the use of the high school auditorium for our October Domestic Violence Awareness Month Vigil.
Many gathered together to remember and honor Fayette County residents who have died as a result of domestic violence homicide. Teachers in the district wrote personal checks to help us keep our doors open so no battered woman or her children would be without access to safe shelter.
The Herald-Standard wrote some insightful material about the impact of the state’s financial struggles and our efforts to continue serving. Thank you for all your help.
DVS’ board of directors have taken the stand that we will continue in our mission to provide safety to those who are battered and in danger and to end violence in our community.
As Domestic Violence Awareness Month draws to a close, please remember that we are here continuing to serve, continuing to educate and continuing to need your help.
Our 24-hour hotline is 724-439-9500. If you know someone in an at-risk situation give her or him that number. We want to help them.
Jacquie Albert
Uniontown
While I believe that the final, belated state budget is a relatively good product, given the Democrats’ initial insistence on spending more and punishing us with higher taxes in the midst of a dire recession, one of the worst provisions within it is an enormous 20 percent cut in the general state appropriation for public libraries.
In 1895, industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie bestowed upon Western Pennsylvania perhaps the greatest gift that one can provide: a public library system that was to be “free to the people,” but with a small caveat, that the operating expenses for his jewel would be funded by the citizenry in perpetuity.
In recent years, libraries have taken it on the chin as other priorities such as providing millions of dollars of public money to rich and greedy professional sports team owners has taken precedence.
As libraries have had to come hat in hand to government every year, sports is insulated from the economic challenges of the day. When a team has wanted a new stadium to be provided to it by hard-working, middle-class Pennsylvanians, it threatens to leave the host city until government predictably capitulates and agrees to provide massive, guaranteed handouts which extend over decades.
For the many who have been enriched through feeding at the public trough, the deficit in library funding is peanuts. I wonder if any of them will step up to help our local engines of literacy and lifelong learning, to return something to the regions that have immorally given them so much that they should now be particularly ashamed to have accepted.
Oren M. Spiegler
Upper Saint Clair