When $27 is more important than reading

Eric B. at Michigan Liberal has a spot-on post about the Macomb County GOP proposing to close down the county library in order to avoid a millage increase that would cost the average resident of the county a whopping $27 in taxes. He writes:

I could tick off a list of services that most libraries offer, and not just loaning books to people too cheap or broke to buy their own. There are literacy and child reading programs, computer training, and in some places access to the local arts community. This is on top of providing perhaps a community’s first and most easily accessible resource to connect people with the advance of human knowledge. You will not find a thorough discussion of the basic chemistry and physics involved in global warming in your local newspaper, for instance, but books detailing all in full are available at your local library. If they don’t have it, they can get it from someone else. Just as your local newspaper connects you with the inner workings of your local government, your library provides access to stuff that is supposed to energize an informed citizenry.

And, Macomb’s Republican county commissioners want to shut off access to such a resource so they don’t have to pay in additional taxes an averaged amount that is less than that of one meal out for a family of four.

Hear, hear. By the way, they also want to shut down the county animal shelter and a nursing home. To save as much money as the average person probably spends on lattes in a month.