The central California town of Salinas, birthplace of Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck, will close its three libraries next year as a cost-cutting move.
The Salinas City Council voted 6-1 late Tuesday to end funding of the libraries due to an $8 million city budget shortfall. The libraries, including the main John Steinbeck branch named for the author of “The Grapes of Wrath,” will close during the first half of 2005.
“Unfortunately part of the $8 million solution is the $3 million library program,” Salinas City Manager David Mora said in an interview on Wednesday. “But in addition to the libraries we are not hiring police officers, we are closing recreation centers, we are making further reductions in maintenance services.”
He blamed a continuing economic recession, voter rejection last month of a local half-cent sales tax increase and other factors for the city’s economic woes.
The library closures mark the latest chapter in the city’s sometimes rocky relationship with literature.
Steinbeck, whose works also included “Of Mice and Men” and “East of Eden,” was born and grew up in Salinas but was often criticized there during his lifetime.
“The vilification of me out here from the large landowners and bankers is pretty bad,” he wrote in 1938.
In recent years, Salinas (population 155,000) has embraced Steinbeck and opened a museum in his honor, but the library closures have again generated negative publicity for the town.
The three Salinas libraries are mostly open only in the afternoons five days a week following earlier cutbacks.
“In essence, for lack of a better word, we are going to mothball the facilities,” Mora said, adding he hoped they would reopen when the city’s financial picture improves.