Under a tent outside the yellow library building on Monday afternoon, third-grader Sarah Enoki Thorp held up her latest read.
“Today, I picked out “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,”” she said.
Enoki Thorp was one of more than 50 people – mostly children – who congregated outside the Bellevue Public Library for a “read in,” a peaceful protest to send a message to the city council that they value the library and its librarian, Kristin Marlar-Gearhart.
“Miss Kristin lets everybody come and read books, and she’s very nice,” said Enoki Thorp, who has also taken dance classes at the library in the past.
Faced with a $463,000 deficit, Bellevue city council members recently discussed making cuts to the library’s $79,000 budget, which makes up about 3% of the city’s total budget.
This caught Marlar-Gearhart, who has been the librarian for a decade, by surprise. She said there are otherwise limited services for the city of roughly 2,600 people, compared to Ketchum and Hailey.
“There’s no gym down here, there’s no skatepark, there’s no public pool, there’s no YMCA, there’s no community center down here,” she said. “Everything is up north, and so it’s the library and the playground, that’s what Bellevue has.”
At the meeting that followed the “read in,” council members assured residents that cuts to the library were not on the table. They moved to reducing the community development and water department budgets, among others, instead.
Still, Nicole Fuentes, who organized the protest, worried that library reductions were mentioned in the first place.
“The library is essential,” she said. She hopes it’s not up for discussion in future years, either.
Find reporter Rachel Cohen on Twitter @racheld_cohen
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