Rising prices are an unfortunate inevitability.

The same is true for rising taxes.

Those who insist that our city or county can grow year after year without ever experiencing a tax increase are either delusional or stubbornly partisan. After all, in what other area of life can we find cost-free growth?

That said, I must question Mecklenburg County Manager Harry Jones’ budget recommendation that would give $2.3 million more to the regional library system.

No, I have not taken leave of my senses, nor are my knuckles raw from dragging the earth.

What I am is a former newspaperman who reached the painful decision to go it alone after witnessing the corrosive effects of technology on the media companies that once employed me.

Those same forces will one day render our public libraries all but obsolete. Bank on it.

For most Mecklenburg residents, finding information that once required a trip to the library is now just a mouse click away. And not surprisingly, the fastest-growing segment of the book publishing industry does not involve paper, ink and binder's glue.

Can any of us really imagine Mecklenburg residents 20 years from now driving to a library to check out a book or to use a computer? The inexorable march of technology will render the notion quaint, if not ridiculous.

Even as I write this, I am consuming my first Walter Mosley novel on an Amazon Kindle. It will not be my last.

In a recent editorial, the Charlotte Observer declared, “Give libraries the money they need to be great.” Sure, and while we’re at it, let’s also increase the fleet of trucks to deliver daily newspapers.

By no means am I suggesting that our library system be abandoned. But just as newspaper companies worldwide have had to embrace some hard realities, so, too, must libraries.

It’s not personal; it’s technology.

So what should we do about our library system?

1. Embrace the fact that an institution that helped define great cities and civilizations in the past will play a lesser role in tomorrow’s world.
2. Use what dollars we have to keep libraries open in poor neighborhoods where technology and resources are most scarce. Sure, the Bill James set would scream and shout, but it’s the right thing to do.
3. Set about in a serious way trying to figure out what the library system of tomorrow should look like.

In a perfect world, of course, we would have tax dollars to fund all of our wants and needs. But ours is not a perfect world.

With residents rightly resistant to paying higher taxes, why not invest more of our scarce dollars in the things that will yield dividends – i.e., schools – and less in the things that must inevitably fade?
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Glenn Burkins is editor and publisher of Qcitymetro.com. Email: editor@qcitymetro.com; Phone: 704-442-1565.

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