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Constructing new buildings is the easy part. Funding them in the years after? That's much more difficult.
Eugene accepted the gift of a library building from Andrew Carnegie in 1904 — and Lane County is still dealing with the repercussions.
One problem with Carnegie’s generosity became apparent as soon as the building opened. The library was supposed to be free for everybody, but because it was owned by the city of Eugene, only taxpaying citizens of Eugene could check out books for free.
That same year the Oregon State Library declared that only counties, not cities, should be building libraries. As a result of this ruling, Portland, for example, does not have a Portland City Library, but rather a Multnomah County Library. Nationwide, Lane County is one of the few counties that does not offer a countywide library card.
An even bigger problem with Carnegie’s gift became obvious later: Libraries are expensive to operate. In fact, it’s estimated that the cost of building a library is less than the cost of running it for six years.
Carnegie was a shrewd Scottish-born industrialist. He got rich running the steel industry in Pittsburgh. He did not pay his steelworkers particularly well. When they complained that he should increase their wages, he replied that they would spend the extra money on food and drink, instead of on the things he thought they should: libraries and concert halls.
In his day Carnegie was the equivalent of modern billionaires like Elon Musk or Bill Gates. But instead of buying influence with the president or alleviating hunger in Africa, Carnegie built libraries. Lots of libraries. From 1890 to 1910 he funded construction of more than 3,000 of them in the United States.
Pretty much any governmental agency willing to provide free land and pay for 10 years of library operations was given money to design and build a handsome library. Eugene’s building was indeed beautiful. Like most beautiful architecture in Eugene, it was torn down after 50 years. Its spirit lives on in the current downtown library, the most popular government building in the city.
After Eugene’s library opened in 1904, other cities in Lane County began building libraries for their citizens: Springfield, Junction City, Cottage Grove, Lowell and Oakridge. Eventually three library districts filled in some of the gaps, opening libraries in Veneta, Florence and Creswell. But 80,000 people in Lane County still do not have free access to a tax-supported public library.
To this day, even if you live in the River Road neighborhood and have a Eugene address, checking out a book at the Eugene library might be harder than you think. If your home is technically outside the city limits, a library card will set you back $11 a month or $132 a year. Students in the Eugene 4J and Bethel school districts are given library privileges, but this still leaves out a lot of people.
Other counties in Oregon have dealt with this problem in different ways. In Washington County, all the libraries decided to work together to form a consortium, allowing anyone in the county to check out a book in one place and return it in another. In Marion County, a very small countywide tax allows everyone to use the Salem Public Library. In Benton County, Corvallis simply decided to let everyone in the county use the Corvallis library for free.
For 122 years, Lane County has struggled to find a way to provide everyone with library service, and has failed. Instead, volunteer libraries have risen in what would otherwise be “library deserts” at Dexter, Alvadore, Blue River, Leaburg and Marcola. With no tax money, these libraries are small and are rarely open more than 20 hours a week.
The Lane Library League is a volunteer nonprofit that’s been looking for answers. (Full disclosure: I serve as unpaid president of this nonprofit.) The LLL holds an Authors & Artists Fair fundraiser each December that raises about $6,000 a year — enough to give each of the volunteer libraries a grant of about $1,000. It’s enough to patch a roof, buy a computer or hold a summer reading program for kids. But it’s obviously a small stopgap measure for a problem that wants a bigger solution.
In the past decade a new library funding problem has emerged. Measure 5 has capped property tax income to cities, so city libraries are facing budget cuts. Eugene’s library has survived the past nine years by asking voters to approve special five-year tax levies. Supporters are now gearing up to pass the levy again next year.
The Fern Ridge Library in Veneta has likewise been living on five-year levies, with each election a game of Russian roulette: pass it or face massive cuts.
Interestingly, there may be an alternative. Could Lane County fill in the gaps by assessing a countywide library service fee? Service fees are generally immune to Measure 5 caps, and although a library service fee would require a vote, it would require only one. The five-year levies would be replaced, dollar for dollar. There would be no tax increase in Eugene. Rural volunteer libraries would be able to hire staff and expand. Everyone in Lane County would have a free, universal library card.
In Oregon, only the cities of Albany and Lebanon have instituted library service fees. No one has yet tried this for an entire county. Certainly, any new funding mechanism would face many hurdles. But the old way of funding libraries in Lane County isn’t working. And it’s really all the fault of Andrew Carnegie.
Carnegie probably dreamed that putting his name on thousands of buildings would buy him immortality. At least in Lane County, it did. He will forever be blamed for our struggle to keep those buildings open to everyone.