The public library on Beatties Ford Road is one of 12 branches scheduled to be closed because of county budget cut, officials said Thursday.

For west Charlotte residents like Shaquilla McGill, the closure would be especially painful.

McGill, a 10th grader at West Mecklenburg High School, said she visits the Beatties Ford branch several times a week. On Thursday, books in arm, she went there, she said, to work on an English project for school and to research the federal Job Corps program.

Ironically, McGill and dozens of others found the branch unexpectedly closed because a $2.5 million renovation project had left the building temporarily without heat.

“I’m here until it closes,” McGill said, stunned after being told of plans to close the branch. “I’m reading books. I come for the book club, too. I come always, any time I have something to do, which is every week.”

Atiya, a 7th grader at Alexander Graham Middle School, who declined to give her last name, said she has no computer at home and visits the Beatties Ford branch daily.

Atiya said she lives in an apartment across the street and had been following the county’s budget woes in the news.

“I come to search history and science,” she said. “I’ll have to go to another library, and that’s all the way uptown.”

In addition to closing 12 of the county’s 24 library branches beginning April 3, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Board of Trustees also voted Thursday to lay off 148 employees, or about a third of the system’s staff.

The vote was taken after county officials instructed library officials to cut $2 million from the system’s current budget. The county, which has projected an $85 million shortfall for the fiscal year startng in July, pays about 91 percent of the system’s $35.4 million budget.

Library officials said they chose branches to close based on the overall cost of library operations, usage levels, proximity to other branches and library size.

"The decision to cut library staff and close library locations was extremely difficult," systems director Charles Brown said in a statement. "I’m heartbroken for what... we face as a community with the closure of almost 50 percent of our libraries.”

Systems spokeswoman Angela Haigler said she appreciates the void that closing the Beatties Ford branch will create.

“I go to church on Beatties Ford Road,” she said. “I understand that that is an important library to that community.”

Raymond McCain, who owns Aim 2 Please Moving, said he would gladly pay higher taxes to keep the Beatties Ford branch open.

He said he uses the branch daily to do research for his fledgling business.

“It’s been a lot of help for a lot of people,” he said. “It’s a safe place for kids to come, and they don’t get in trouble. I think it’s been a big part of Beatties Ford Road.”

Other branches set to close include:
· Belmont
· Carmel
· Checkit Outlet
· Cornelius
· Hickory Grove
· Independence Regional
· Mint Hill
· Morrison Regional
· Myers Park
· Scaleybark
· Sugar Creek

The library system has created a special Web page to keep the public updated on budget cuts. Go to www.cmlibrary.org, click on "About Us," and then "Budget."

Harriet Smith, who chairs a group called Friends of the Library, has issued a challenge for communities to raise the $2 million needed to offset county cuts.

A link has been set up to accept donations.
 

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