I think everyone who knows us knows one thing about us: our family loves books. The bookshelves line the walls to the point that there’s no room to hang art. There are stacks by everyone’s desk, on everyone’s nightstand, and (often) in the van. Naturally, something else comes with our love of books: a love for our public library.

The Lafayette Public Library is at an inflection point. One of its two millages is on the ballot November 13 – a millage that represents 38% of the library system’s annual operating revenue. Normally, this kind of millage renewal is almost a given. The same sort of property tax is used to fund police, firefighters, parks, drainage, and other civil services. But in 2018, Lafayette learned that public support for libraries could not be taken for granted.

In 2018, a new PAC was formed – Citizens for a New Louisiana. The PAC spent upwards of $20,000, including a direct mailing to Lafayette Parish residents, arguing that the library system had too much money in reserve to need this millage renewal.

The voters agreed — at least, roughly 650 more voters agreed than disagreed, in an election that had only 8% voter turnout. The result was a $3.6 million budget cut for the libraries. 

If that weren’t enough, voters also pulled $10 million from the library’s reserve funds and rededicated it to drainage and parks. Then property values dropped in 2020, delivering another hit to the library’s budget. The Parish council voted to adjust a remaining millage to make up for the short fall, since the library has not been receiving the full 2 mills the voters awarded them in the first place, but Mayor-President Josh Guillory vetoed the proposal.

All of which means that the November 13 millage vote is truly make-or-break for our libraries.

Geoff Daily has a very clear run-down of the implications over at The Current, so I won’t go into all the details. But the important thing to know is that if this millage fails, some of our libraries will close. $4 million are on the line, and there is absolutely no way to save $4 million by cutting corners here and there. There are a couple of possible scenarios floating out there, but if you visit any branch other than Main, your favorite library is in danger.

This situation is especially depressing because of the steps Lafayette has taken to build its library system over the past twenty years. With the 2019 opening of West Regional Library in Scott, the city completed a project voters approved twenty years ago to renovate Main and build four regional libraries. Our system, in fact, was awarded the James O. Modisette Award for Public Libraries in 2020, recognizing the improvements made in the libraries’ service to the community. That’s the highest honor the Louisiana Library Association can give to a public library system. 

It would be a shame to throw away the work of the past two decades, work that has made Lafayette Public Libraries one of the premier systems in the state, because the citizens of Lafayette don’t want to contribute $20 per year per household.

Wait – what? You can see for yourself. The Library has set up a calculator to estimate how much property tax a household will pay for this millage. 

Our family pays $11.96 a year. Less than $2 a person.

To put that in perspective, one picture book costs roughly $17 these days. I gathered up all the library books in our house (that I could find – you know how that is!) and added up the total. We have $1,011 worth of library materials in our home at this moment. And since that’s not counting computer and printer access, programming, digital checkouts, take-home crafts, and use of the space (a couple of hours a month, at least), and assistance from librarians, I think we’re getting our money’s worth.

There are many more reasons you should vote to fund our libraries…but I don’t want to try my dear readers’ patience with a longer blog post. So I plan to finish this conversation next week. If you don’t already love your library enough to make you put up some home-made “Save Our Libraries” yard signs, hopefully next week’s post will convince you that you should.

It’s long past time I wrote about Kim.

First, the background. Craig and I were married the weekend between exams and graduation. That summer, we moved a solid 1,000 miles away from our families. We knew no one; our closest contact was my graduate program director, with whom I had had a couple of phone conversations.

We met Kim through our church. She was a recent convert to Catholicism, and a single mother of five children, ranging in age from early twenties (roughly our own age) down to four.

Kim invited us to her house for dinner. Almost immediately, this became a standing date. Every Tuesday was Kim’s house, and Kim’s house meant board games with the nine year old, non-grad-student conversation, cloth napkins, and always a steaming pot of tea.

We often say that our family’s emphasis on hospitality stems from reading so much Dorothy Day, and her writings (and Peter Maurin’s, of course) do provide much of the philosophy behind our way of life. But the person in whom this ideal of hospitality took on flesh in our lives was Kim.

Every week for nearly a year she fed us, but her influence went much deeper than that. There were the little things: Would I have ever thought to use cloth napkins for everyday if I hadn’t known Kim? Is it any wonder that, when we decided we needed a teapot, the one I picked out is a close cousin to the round, earthy brown one from which she poured every time we visited? There were also some big things — like how to offer what you have and how to listen with all you are.

The joy and welcome we found at Kim’s house went a long way towards grounding us in the radically new situation we found ourselves in that year. That hospitality is something we’ve tried to replicate our whole marriage. She planted a seed, showed us a way of life open to seeing and caring for whoever crossed our paths. I’m sure we thanked her before we left, but we couldn’t have known then just how much we would have to thank her for. Fifteen years later, her little seed is still bearing fruit.