MILTON’S residents have given the loudest possible message about saving their library as hundreds marched along the Princes Highway on Saturday morning.
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Between 250 and 300 people chanted “Save our library” and waved signs as they gathered and marched on the roadway led by State Member for South Coast Shelley Hancock.
As the crowd settled outside the library building Mrs Hancock told the gathering, “This is not just about the library, this is about cutting services to Milton.
“I am pleading with the Shoalhaven City Councillors to listen to this community and preserve the library for our children and grandchildren,” she said.
That urging continued long after the rally, when Mrs Hancock was in lively discussion with Cr Allan Baptist and more particularly Cr Patricia White.
“I told her to change her mind, to consent to keeping the library open,” Mrs Hancock said.
Community consultation on the library’s future is due to start today, but the community is being given only four options – two involving closing the library and having a mobile library visit Milton fortnightly or monthly, cutting the library’s opening hours to one day a week, or keeping current opening hours but reviewing the situation in 12 months.
Cr Amanda Findley said that would be “death by degrees,” not only for the library but for Milton.
“This is the heart of our town,” she said.
Closing the library would force older people out of the town to borrow books and access services, which Cr Findley said had long-term implications for the community.
“They belong here, they should be sharing their stories at the fireside that is a library,” she said.
She argued the community wanted more services and longer opening hours, rather than less.
Earlier Cr Patricia White told the gathering the previous council had voted to close the Milton Library 18 months after the redeveloped Ulladulla Library was opened, but Cr Findley and former councillor Robert Miller both dismissed that as being untrue.
They said the previous council decided in 2009 to review Milton Library’s services 18 months after the Ulladulla Library reopened, but Crs White and Baptist were part of the decision to bring forward that review to six months after the reopening.
Cr White told Saturday’s gathering statistics showed low usage of the Milton Library, but she urged people to take part in the community consultation process to have a say on what they wanted for the library – even if it was longer hours which audience members claimed would lead to an increase in statistics.
Cr Baptist said council was reviewing “everything”, and urged people to “have a really hard look at the model you have here”.
However Cr Baptist and Cr White came under the microscope when Robert Miller took to the microphone and said the library would be saved if just two members of the Team Gash councillors threw their support behind it, and he called on Crs White and Baptist to raise their hands in the library’s support.
While there were others speaking in support of the library, about its importance as a hub of the community, about its contribution to a literate and informed community, and about it being a key part of the region’s creativity, it was perhaps primary school student Emily Hendry who best summed up the mood of the gathering.
She said she loved going to the library after school because “Reading inspires me so much.”
She pointed out the different approach to libraries in Milton and Ulladulla.
“It’s like they’re saying people in Ulladulla are more important than Milton, and they’re not,” Emily said.
Protest organiser Alison Pakes said she was delighted with the turnout, showing, “This is our library and we’re going to fight for it.”
“It’s great to see the unity and commitment from such a small community,” she added.
Alison paid tribute to Cr Mark Kitchener, saying without his efforts, “It just would have been closed.”
She was one of many people urging people to be active in the community consultation process and write letters to council voicing their views.
* Last week’s Times contained a quote from Alison Pakes in which she claimed Cr Patricia White had voted to close the Milton Library. This was not correct. Cr White had voted only to bring forward the community consultation period by as year.
