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Editor, News-Register
The recent decision by the Ohio County Board of Education to drastically cut funding for the Ohio County Public Library is short-sighted and ill-advised.
If these cuts are allowed to happen the negative impact on the community will be felt for years to come. Ironically, the population most to suffer will be the very children the Board of Education is mandated to serve. Should it be discovered money taken from our revered library is to go to the building of additional athletic facilities then recent statements by the board's leadership must be seen as disingenuous at best.
In my role as a children's author I have traveled all over the great state of West Virginia for decades and am more convinced than ever that ours is as fine a public library as can be found anywhere. Yes, the premier example of what a community library should be can be found right here in Wheeling.
I believe the school board saw easy pickings with the library's budget, saw monies with which to pad their own pet projects when, in fact, the library is as fine a steward of their funds as any comparable institution in West Virginia, judiciously apportioning them where the need is greatest whether for children's programming or the community at large.
There appears to have been a rush to slash the library's funding seeing how the library's analysis of its budget was dismissed in such cavalier fashion, certainly without any public discussion and without proper time to consider the comprehensive and detailed document supplied by the library to the Board of Education.
That this consideration did not take place is shameful.
I urge all who value our library as I do to call and let the Board of Education know what a treasure we all have in the Ohio County Public Library and demand the school board restore every penny they've tried to misappropriate into their own coffers.
Marc Harshman
Poet Laureate of West Virginia
Wheeling