DALLAS — A Northeast Dallas library recommended to be closed amid city budget cuts will likely stay open after community members banded together to oppose the plan.
A petition created to support keeping the Skillman Southwestern Library open has more than 3,000 signatures, Thursday.
Currently, Dallas City Council's city budget proposed for 2024-2025 calls for devoting $78 million more to the Dallas Police Department and Dallas Fire-Rescue -- hiring an additional 250 police officers and 63 firefighters, and putting $42.8 million toward equipment and fleet for first responders. All other departments within the general fund would see a decrease in funding by a combined $13.5 million.
The proposed budget for 2024 also sees the property tax rate cut by 3.10 cents to 70.47 cents per $100 valuation, which city officials tout as the largest single-year tax rate cut in Dallas’ modern history. The proposed budget also increases the property tax exemption for residents who are age 65 and over or living with a disability from $139,400 to $153,400.
The budget also calls for increasing the minimum wage for city workers, funding to contribute to the city's effort to cut unsheltered homelessness by 50% by 2026 and closing the Skillman Southwestern Library in Northeast Dallas.
The Skillman Southwestern Library is the only library on the potential chopping block, but on Wednesday, the Dallas City Council tentatively showed support for shifting money in the coming budget to avoid shutting down the Skillman Southwestern Library.
Several councilmembers expressed concern over where the money would come from to maintain the library, but councilmember Paula Blackmon -- who represents the area the library is in -- promised the community would work to improve low attendance at library events, which made it a target for closure.
“There are some libraries in the system that aren’t meeting high attendance, high utilization. And Southwestern is one of those," Blackmon told WFAA.
She said two things were needed to keep the library open: "money and votes."
Blackmon proposed moving more than $485,000 from the nearly $6 million planned to go toward an incentive fund to improve infrastructure in underserved areas,
“The budget’s tight. It’s like Jenga. You start pulling things out, and it could collapse.,” Blackmon told WFAA. “[But] I think given the outpour, it is important. I think it’s my duty to try to figure out to make it work.”
During public comment in city council meetings over the last several weeks, Northeast Dallas residents have used their allotted time to ask council members to reconsider the library's closure.
"It’s been a source of community in a world that is very disconnected and very hard to find people you connect to,” said Maggie Watson.
Watson started the petition, now thousands of signatures long, to keep the library open.
"Declining communities are communities that lose city services, like libraries," said Watson.
Watson told WFAA that losing the Skillman Southwestern Library would be a loss of a walkable place for residents in the neighborhood to get books, to meet for book clubs, to escape the heat, and vote during election time.
"People are really feeling the impact of this proposal so, moving forward, we’re just trying to get our voices heard by our city council members," Ashley Grossman, a petition supporter, said.
Grossman said she and her roommate moved to the neighborhood surrounding the Skillman Northeast Library specifically for the library. She said they would likely move if the library closed down.
It’s unclear how the library will be funded after the next fiscal year. Meanwhile, the approval to keep the library open was non-binding and won’t be official until the City Council approves a final version of the nearly $5 billion budget on September 18.