While our Governor has millions of dollars, he lives in a township that has one of the tiniest libraries I’ve ever seen. The people who live near this very small library have to rely (many of them can’t afford cars) on very inadequate public transportation. It was explained to me that people who live in the part of Superior Township where the Governor lives are considered to be part of Ann Arbor District Library’s area, while people who (many cannot afford cars) have to rely on a very inadequate public transportation, have a library branch with only two computers and the number of books that can fit into a small room. [The librarians there are nice to the kids, but they are dealing with an unfair circumstance.]
Maybe the Governor doesn’t feel it’s his problem that children in his own township get very little while he has very much: (his children attend a private school in Ann Arbor; he gets to drive a car to Ann Arbor’s spacious library, where the branches have ten to twenty times the number of computers that the Ypsilanti Public Library can afford for its branch in Superior Township.

Our Governor doesn’t have to worry about having to pay an annual fee to access the spacious and computer-luxurious Ann Arbor libraries, but a friend of mine, living just down Packard Road from the Malletts Creek branch of the Ann Arbor library, would have to pay a fee, which is unaffordable on the fixed income that most elderly folks have. Why? The rich don’t have to pay fees to go to public district libraries, but elderly and children do have to pay fees and take multiple buses which do cost money as well as a lot of time, in order to access a public service that ought to be equal and free.

Judith Bonnell-Wenzel
Ann Arbor, MI