The newest Annapolis Valley Regional Library board member says he wants to give the biggest push he can to save branches that are slated to close.
The regional library board’s chief executive officer Julia Merritt announced a major restructuring of services on June 1, including the closure of the Hantsport, Kentville, Lawrencetown, Middleton, and Port Williams branches effective July 20. Nine full-time equivalent positions will be eliminated.
“Closing them should be a last resort, not a first resort,” Kentville Mayor Andrew Zebian said.
At its June 22 meeting, Kentville town council passed a motion to appoint Zebian to the Annapolis Valley Regional Library board. The position was previously held by Coun. Samantha Hamilton. In a social media post, Zebian thanked Hamilton for her time and commitment to the board.
On June 23, Zebian said the town’s nominating committee had met several days earlier and decided that because the situation with the pending closure of the Kentville library branch had reached a critical point, they would recommend the change in board representation. Zebian said the appointments are typically for two years, and Hamilton began her term this past fall.
Zebian said meeting minutes indicate that library board members became aware on May 2 that the Kentville branch was among the potential closures, but this hadn’t been communicated to council.
He said the library board officially voted to close five branches on May 25, but he and council didn’t learn the Kentville branch would close until it was announced publicly on June 1. If council had been given more time, “we might not be in this spot now,” he said.
“From the council’s perspective, we just felt that if we’d had that four- or five-week window, we might have been able to have more conversations with the board or the province,” he said.
Zebian said he wants to “give it the biggest push I can” in terms of trying to save the Kentville library and other branches from closure. Sitting on the library board will allow for direct input on future decisions. He said putting all the mayors and wardens from the partner municipalities on the board may be what is needed at this point.
He said Kentville council also passed a motion on June 22 to withdraw funding from the Annapolis Valley Regional Library, although the decision wouldn’t go into effect until December 2027. If it ends up that the Kentville branch can be saved, he said council could rescind that motion.
The mayor said he had been asking the library board a lot of questions over the past couple of weeks that hadn’t been asked before, “so there may be paths forward that we can work toward keeping some of these branches open.”
Zebian said he thinks the province should increase regional library funding, but better communication between the board and town could have also had a positive impact.
Town fulfilled request
He said the library board requested a funding increase from the eight municipal partners in January, with only three providing the full amount requested: Kentville, West Hants, and Annapolis Royal.
The other five municipalities provided a percentage of the requested increase. Zebian said that, collectively, the regional library may have received about 50 per cent of what was asked for in terms of increased municipal funding.
If the municipal partners had provided the full amount, he said it may not have been enough to save all five branches, but perhaps some could have remained open.
Zebian said he continues communicating with Kings North MLA and Finance Minister John Lohr on the subject, and with Communities, Culture, Tourism, and Heritage Minister Dave Ritcey through Lohr. The mayor said he “remains hopeful that there will be a positive outcome for all the branches.”
He said Kentville is the busiest of all the regional library branches, so in a way has the most to lose. He was surprised by the announced closure, especially after the town provided the full increase requested. In this regard, the board’s decision is difficult to understand or digest.
Zebian said that at no point did the library board approach the town about needing a further increase to keep the branch open.
“I do understand that the board is under pressure and maybe they felt like they were being pushed into a corner, but I still have to say that the communication between the board itself directly to me, which then would go to council, I don’t think was handled as well as it should have been,” the mayor said.
Quiet protests and read-ins continue to occur across the Annapolis Valley as residents lobby to have the pending library branch closures reversed. Terri Milton, a retired Nova Scotia Community College librarian, has attended protests in Middleton, Hantsport, Windsor, and Kentville. She told the newspaper it is important to fight to keep the branches open.
“Libraries are so much more than books, and if you only treat libraries as rooms full of books, it’s easy to think of them as expendable, but they’re not,” Milton said while protesting in Windsor June 16.
“They are the cornerstones of their community in so many ways. They are places for literacy; they are places for access to the internet. They level economic inequity.”
Source: Annapolis Valley Register