Camden's libraries, which received national attention last week when it appeared that budget cuts would force them out of business permanently, are to be saved.
Camden City Council is expected to approve a resolution allowing the Camden County library system to take over the three facilities without a citywide vote, officials said.
"After learning that the library board's only solution was to close our libraries, I knew I would not let that happen," Mayor Dana L. Redd said Monday.
Details are to be worked out, but city residents would pay an annual levy to be part of the county system, Redd said. The arrangement would "expand library services for city residents," she said.
Camden County Freeholder Director Louis Cappelli Jr. did not rule out closing one or more of the city branches and laying off all employees under the plan.
The announcement came at a news conference in City Hall with county officials and representatives of the Camden School District, but without members of the city's library board of trustees, who had been preparing to shut the libraries after Redd cut funding by about two-thirds last month.
With less than $300,000 in its coffers, the board had said that it would have to close the 105-year-old library system, which receives more than 150,000 annual visits, by the end of the year. It would lay off all 21 employees and donate, sell, or destroy the libraries' 87,000 books.
Such a move would have been unprecedented by a multi-branch system, according to the American Library Association.
Board President Martin McKernan, reached on vacation Monday afternoon, said he knew nothing of the mayor's new plan. At the news conference, Redd said, "We have talked to" McKernan.
"The mayor has not contacted me," McKernan said. "My hope would be that the library continues to provide the same level of service that it has been providing."
Frank Fulbrook, a library board member in the audience at the news conference, called the county takeover a land grab.
For more than a decade, there have been rumors and reports that Camden County officials sought to put an expanded county jail or courthouse on the site of the library's main branch on Federal Street downtown. The current jail and courthouse, both in need of expansion, are adjacent to the library.
"This was all a cynical ploy," Fulbrook said. "The county and mayor manufactured a fiscal crisis for the city libraries by giving us only $281,000, knowing we would have to shut down."
