Date: Election Day, Tuesday August 3^rd

Time: 5:00 p.m. until you leave or closing time

Location: Kelly’s Irish Pub, Downtown Lansing - 203 South Washington Square

We’ll supply munchies, check election results from our designated election headquarters room, and have tables reserved for our party. We hope you’ll stop by to celebrate with us!

And in case you can’t make it to Kelly’s on Aug. 3…

Everyone involved in the Libraries Now!/Support CADL effort wants to thank you for your support in word, deed, and contribution. It is because of you that we are able to provide vital programs and materials to the communities we proudly serve.

With sincerest gratitude,

The Support CADL Team

Even more reasons to vote “yes” on renewing the CADL millage:

From Flickr User: Library of Congress

1. Library usage is up, not down. In fact, it’s way up. And CADL is not asking for one penny of increased funding. Not one penny! Seriously.

2. If the millage passes, it doesn’t increase your current property taxes by one penny, and the 13 CADL branches and bookmobile continue to operate. If the millage fails, the library closes, and your property taxes won’t even decrease enough for you to notice. (Less than 3.5%. Seriously.)

3. Michigan needs to hold on to young, college-educated people, especially families. You’ve heard about “cool cities”? Yeah, I didn’t really buy that either. My family and I don’t live in a loft, and we don’t want to. We don’t want a new nightclub, or a cool place to shop downtown. We want a library. We want story hours. We want a safe place to bring our kids where they can have fun and learn and we can find information on how to kill the dandelions in my lawn or cook a good dinner faster. If you want to keep college graduates in state, fund the library. Seriously.

Anyone here remember the movie, “Short Circuit 2?” In it, a naive robot, who thinks he is alive, is obsessed with collecting “input” or knowledge. As a middle school teacher, I identify with the character. Check out this scene from the movie in which the robot comes face to face with a massive bookstore, a treasure trove of input:

Certainly Capital Area District Library (CADL) provides input-seekers young and old with a vast array (terabytes!) of input. However, the CADL system doesn’t just offer media for borrowing and enjoyment. The CADL system is helping young children, teens, and adults stay mentally active year-round, especially in the summer months. The libraries offer scheduled group reading activities, song and dance, story-time events, live theater, family movies and a lot more. Check out all the summer activities here.

This video explains how programs, like those CADL offers during the summer, should be developed help fill the summer learning void:

As an educator, I concentrate on helping students develop the skills to be contributing members of a community. The library is a perfect place to practice using those skills. The library is a safe, comfortable and respectful place where community members can interact with one another, share knowledge and thoughts, be entertained and discover new things. It’s also a great equalizer, with free membership that allows all people access to its many resources, including free Internet.

The library system is maintained through civic support in many forms, especially the millage, which is up for renewal in the August 3 primary election. I encourage you to join me in showing our young people how as a community, we can participate in the political process to declare our support for the library system. Remember that scene from Short Circuit 2? “See those guys right there? They want to take your books away!” Let’s not be those guys and vote “Yes” to renew the CADL millage.

Mike Vasas is a Lansing resident who teaches middle school music.He runs a music blog project at http://songsnotbyme.com

Michigan is struggling.  Lansing is struggling.  We’re all struggling.  Because of this fact, many people will say that we’re all over taxed and public institutions need to live within their means just like citizens.  These people will be vocal opponents to any millage.  They’ll also say that the more taxes there are the less money an economy has to thrive.  While this may be true in many circumstances, there is at least one exception.   Public Libraries.

Publicly funded libraries are one of the few public institutions that citizens can directly see how much value they get from their contribution to a public institution. In fact, the more citizens use their library, the more value they get from their library tax dollars.    You will probably save more money than you will have to pay to fund the library.  So go ahead, Vote Yes for the CADL millage renewal (they’re not even asking for more money) on August 3rd and get value from your tax dollars.  To see how much value you’re getting, check out CADL’s Library Use Value Calculator.

Originally published 6/30/10 in the Lansing City Pulse.

by Gavin Craig – Lansing, MI

In 2005, my wife and I moved back to the Lansing area after an unsuccessful year looking for work in Detroit and the east coast. We knew the area well from our time at Michigan State University, but we were coming back without much of a support system. Our closest family was in Detroit (my father lives in Chicago, and my wife’s parents in New Jersey), and nearly all of our friends had moved out of the area (and the state). Our daughter was a little more than a year old at the time, and we were expecting our second.

We were living on a single income, and needed entertainment and educational resources for a stay-at-home-mother and a place for the family to get out and socialize. We found all of this in the Capital Area District Library’s Foster branch, which had a great collection of kids’ books and music, and a weekly story hour.

Our children are older now, and my wife and I are both working full-time, but the library is still a big part of our lives. Our daughters check out more chapter books than picture books these days (Cynthia Rylant is a particular favorite), but Sesame Street CDs are still popular, and audiobooks still keep us all happy, healthy, and sane on the long drives to visit grandparents in Chicago, New Jersey and Tennessee.

Aug. 3, voters will be asked to renew the millage that supports the Capital Area District Library. Even with increased operation costs and record levels of library use, CADL has not requested additional funds, but only a renewal of the millage. This millage covers nearly 90 percent of CADL’s operation. Without it, 13 CADL branches will close by Jan. 3, 2011.

The Capital Area District Library is an essential community resource, and one of the best values in the area. In 2009, more than 1.5 million visitors checked out 2.7 million items. My family conservatively estimates that we get $148 for every dollar of our property taxes that goes to support the library.

Even more, my daughters get excited when it’s time to go to the library. They love to return books on the conveyor belt in the downtown branch, they meet up with friends by accident or at special events. They sit and read, and read and read.

Please vote to renew CADL’s millage on August 3. The library is a treasure.