ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — "I have three daughters. We really like to come here especially when it’s hot outside," Tayler Gibson of St. Augustine said. She loves her library. She and her girls spent time at the Southeast Branch library Wednesday.
"I like that they get to be introduced to all kinds of books," Gibson said.
In 2008, when the pages of the recession revealed hard times, the St. Johns County library system’s funding was scaled back big time.
Library Services Director Debra Rhodes Gibson remembers the funding cutbacks in 2008. She remembers when she started there were 80 employees. Over the period of the recession, it dwindled to 60, she said. "It was huge. It was huge," she nodded.
The library hours were also trimmed back, and all libraries were shut down on Sundays.
15 years later, "We have the same hours as the recession, but we have so many more residents in the county," Rhodes Gibson noted. According to census figures, the county's population has doubled since 2008.
Now comes a proposed county budget that would almost restore the library funding to pre-recession levels, Rhodes Gibson said. It would allocate an additional $260,000 to the public library system.
If approved, the four largest libraries would be able to open on Sundays.
"I really like that because my husband's only day off is Sunday," Gibson, the mother of the three daughters said. "He’s always talking about the library when we was a kid."
The additional funding would also let the library hire more staff. And that could help with the very popular programs inside and outside of the library’s walls such as Storytime and the Book-mobile. Rhodes Gibson says the demand for those programs is incredibly high right now.
She noted that the budget option the county commission is considering is not a full restoration of funding, but it could be a happy ending.
"I’m exicited. We have asked for this funding for several yeas and is been denied," Rhodes Gibson smiled, "We’re dancing in the streets! We just are!"