DATE: Sunday, March 30, 1997                TAG: 9703270006

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   50 lines

COUNCIL'S GOT THE WORD CITY HALL MUST FIND A WAY TO BOOST INVESTMENT IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM.

The Norfolk Public Library's board of trustees, whose members are appointed by City Council, is seeking an appropriation equal to 1 percent of the close to half-billion-dollar 1997-'98 city budget for the institution they oversee.

With assistance from the 600-member Friends of the Library and civic-league leaders and foot soldiers gathering signatures on a petition, the trustees have gotten City Council's respectful attention to their plea for roughly $5 million for the upcoming fiscal year. Council members are also talking openly of constructing a new main library.

The $3.8 million 1996-97 appropriation is eight-tenths of 1 percent of the nearly $488 million city budget - and markedly less than the $4.1 million allotted for operation of the main library and its 10 branches in 1991.

A 1-percent-of-municipal-budget allocation is the minimum for maintaining an adequate library operation in a city Norfolk's size. Virginia Beach, which is more populous than Norfolk, and Chesapeake, which will soon have as many people as Norfolk, allocate 1 percent of revenue for their libraries - and are still underfunding them.

Like other aged central cities abandoned or routinely bypassed by affluent families, Norfolk is fiscally stressed. An expected shortfall of $2.8 million in projected revenue compelled the city in March to clamp down on spending in the last months of the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. Department heads are economizing and curtailing hiring for non-critical positions. City Manager James B. Oliver sees scant likelihood of bridging the library funding gap in 1997-98.

City Council has the final say on budgets, of course. But, as The Virginian-Pilot reported last week, ``Library backers have launched an intensive lobbying campaign, circulating petitions and sending hundreds of postcards to city officials urging support for more money.''

The grass-roots outcry followed the library a complaint by the library trustees that several years of fiscal deprivation had produced a system inadequate to the needs of its citizens. Library staff is half what it was at the start of the decade. Book and information-technology purchases lag. Norfolk residents more and more turn to Chesapeake and Virginia Beach libraries.

If the funding increase sought by the trustees, Norfolk Public Library could make electronically accessible information available to all the city's residents, enhance security at its facilities, develop services for teens, deliver needed services efficiently and effectively.

Norfolk City Council has a lot on its plate. The city has invested heavily in public-private partnerships to fatten its tax base. The time has come for City Hall to boost investment in the public library system.

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