The contracting and selling of public lands and projects to private companies is always a touchy issue. The complaints against such arrangements are, to be sure, not without merit; countless times, a company has made promises to a government body, which in turn has promised those same things to its constituents, only to be under-delivered in the end. Even more common, is that an attempt to secure a project leads to under-bidding, and taxpayers end up between a rock and a hard place when they have to choose between shelling out more money and leaving a project halfway finished. Because communities generally don’t want to leave their new park, library, or other public facility halfway finished, they almost always opt to pay up. In a way, private contractors can easily extort government agencies, and by extension the communities they serve. [Read more…]

Borrowing a common pool of resources is the way of the library. From books, to CD’s, to computers and Internet usage, libraries offer services to their communities free of charge. These services are then funded by the government, and by extension tax revenue. Unfortunately, the funding libraries have received in recent years hasn’t always been enough. In the midst of economic crunch times, the library systems in each state and the services they offer are often seen as societal extras; they’re nice to have when we can, but not necessary. Unfortunately, tough times are exactly when libraries are most relevant, as community access to learning materials, the Internet, and more may be limited for more and more families due to financial burden. [Read more…]