Lack of focus got Des Plaines library into this mess

During a rare fit of insomnia, I happened upon a Des Plaines Public Library board meeting on the public access channel. What caught my ear was a comment by one of the officers that the library had no operating reserves and will soon go before the city council to borrow $1.5 million to keep the library from going dark before the year ends.

Listening further, it was revealed that the Library had to do this last year as well.

I suggest the problem lies in the mission statement of the DPPL. It has none. A library should be a repository for the written word in the form of books and periodicals, and now, Internet content, and make it accessible to its citizens. That is the mission of a library. Period.

On the DPPL website, they have a "Vision and Beliefs" statement, but no clear mission. This is obvious to anyone who looks at their calendar of events. Meeting rooms and programs abound for condo associations, folkloric dance troupes, a fishing club, Wii games tournaments, 2- and 3-year-old day care, a school for autistic and ADHD children, school board meetings, and sadly, remedial reading classes. Now the library is so loud, I won't go there anymore.

They are providing "free" recreation services that are park district responsibilities, "free" condo board rooms that should be provided by condo association fees, "free" day care that should be provided by parents, dance clubs that should be funded by members and remedial and special education that should be provided by school districts.

If DPPL stuck to being a library, they would be flush with cash. How prescient were the voters who feared the new library would expand into everything but a library and said no twice?

Lawrence Jankowski

Des Plaines