{"id":14054,"date":"2015-09-17T15:26:47","date_gmt":"2015-09-17T19:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/?p=14054"},"modified":"2015-09-17T15:26:47","modified_gmt":"2015-09-17T19:26:47","slug":"trots-getting-rid-of-the-non-resident-library-card-fee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/09\/17\/trots-getting-rid-of-the-non-resident-library-card-fee\/","title":{"rendered":"TROTS: Getting rid of the non-resident library card fee"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m glad that the $50 fee that the City of Danville is charging for non-residents to get a library card is about to be eliminated. However, if you just read what’s in the Danville Register & Bee article about it, you’re not getting what caused this to happen on Tuesday night. Let’s take a look at The Rest Of The Story.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Let’s start off with the article in the Danville Register & Bee. (Register & Bee article, paywall may apply unless you break through it)<\/p>\n

City eyes dropping library non-resident fee<\/a><\/h3>\n

Last Tuesday, between the Industrial Development Authority and the Planning Commission meetings, I had some time to kill so I went around downtown looking for potential stories. I stopped in the Danville Public Library and talked with the extremely friendly staff. They told me about the promotion that they had going for National Library Card Month, so I went ahead and did a small BonusCentral feature on it right there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Within an hour, I got feedback about the $50 fee. That’s when I said “Hey, this needs to be checked out and possibly eliminated because it’s stupid.” I asked library staff about it, and they couldn’t give me the information that I needed to find out how much money came in from the fee. So, I went back over to City Hall and stopped by Assistant Finance Director Patricia Conner’s office and she was glad to get me the amount of revenue that had been generated. By the way, it was around $8500 in fiscal year 2013, $5500 in fiscal year 2014 and $4800 in fiscal year 2015.<\/p>\n

That’s when I realized that was a relatively trivial amount when it comes to library funding and extremely small when it comes to the city’s budget. As I’m fond of saying, “IT GOTS TO GO!”. That night, I started the lobbying process by talking to a city councilman who was very supportive of the idea. I continued the lobbying effort and formed a coalition of at least seven council members who agreed that the fee should be repealed. When I got to Tuesday’s council meeting, I talked with council members and told them that I was going to run an editorial on Wednesday morning about getting rid of the fee. Several council members said “Let’s get that done tonight in the work session”, and I was quite pleased with that. I also talked with R&B reporter Denice Thibodeau and gave her a heads-up on what was going to happen.<\/p>\n

Yes. This repeal of the library fee had been talked about for a long time, but nothing had happened with it. the issue had became dormant again until I restarted the cause. I listened to one of SouthsideCentral’s reader’s complaints, did some investigation on the complaint and got the ball rolling on the repeal effort. In one week, this went from a reader’s problem to a solution that was agreed to by Danville City Council.<\/p>\n

Let’s be real. I don’t expect the Register & Bee to mention my efforts in getting this done because I’m competition to them. I especially don’t expect them to mention SouthsideCentral in any form. That’s the nature of the way that they run the business.<\/p>\n

I’m not looking for the spotlight. I’m not looking for credit. The hashtag of #BeholdThePowerOfSouthsideCentral is used for fun and games.<\/p>\n

I just wanted you folks to know The Rest Of The Story.<\/p>\n

\"sclogo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m glad that the $50 fee that the City of Danville is charging for non-residents to get a library card is about to be eliminated. However, if you just read what’s in the Danville Register & Bee article about it, you’re not getting what caused this to happen on Tuesday night. Let’s take a look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-rest-of-the-story","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwqFk-3EG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12407,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/04\/20\/rottenreporting-oops-we-missed-that-meeting\/","url_meta":{"origin":14054,"position":0},"title":"RottenReporting: Oops. We missed that meeting.","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"April 20, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The Danville Register & Bee says that Danville Public Schools new school requests are \"expected to come up for discussion\" at Tuesday night's Danville City Council meeting. That's wrong, and good reporting would have discovered that. Oh yeah, delinquent tax fees aren't going up either. School budget, fee and rate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "RottenReporting"","block_context":{"text":"RottenReporting","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/rottenreporting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/Dmk8rat.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13043,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/06\/16\/rottenreporting-the-10000000-mistake\/","url_meta":{"origin":14054,"position":1},"title":"UPDATED: RottenReporting: The $10,000,000 Mistake","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"June 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"UPDATE: The Register & Bee corrected the article within two hours of this article being published. Behold the power of SouthsideCentral. I did my best to avoid writing this edition of RottenReporting, but the Register & Bee wouldn't modify their story. Register & Bee reporter Vicky Cruz watched drones fly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "RottenReporting"","block_context":{"text":"RottenReporting","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/rottenreporting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sclogo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7869,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2013\/09\/15\/thumbs-9152013\/","url_meta":{"origin":14054,"position":2},"title":"Thumbs! (9\/15\/2013)","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"September 15, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"You've got Thumbs! to the left, Thumbs! to the right, and we're the only Thumber in town... Let's see our Thumbs! like and dislike this time out... Thumbs UP! to Joe Zappacosta. He's leaving the director job at the Halifax County library system and moving to the director job at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Danville"","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12579,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/05\/07\/photocentral-danville-city-council-5515-part-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":14054,"position":3},"title":"PhotoCentral: Danville City Council (5\/5\/15) – Part #1","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"May 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"We've already published our LIVE! Danville City Council coverage article and it had thirteen photos in it. That's thirteen more than the newspaper had in it. Heh. We've got enough bonus coverage photos for a couple of PhotoCentral articles so let's get to it. We'll start with a few before\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Danville"","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/GhwRz22.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/GhwRz22.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/GhwRz22.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/GhwRz22.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":13184,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/07\/02\/southsidecentral-always-there-to-help\/","url_meta":{"origin":14054,"position":4},"title":"SouthsideCentral: Always there to help!","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"July 2, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"SouthsideCentral is always glad to help the Danville Register & Bee (and other media sources) out with stories that they wouldn't have known about without us. Hahahahaha! At 1:50 PM today, we published an article about the idiotic rumor that the Danville Public Schools had removed plaques of the American\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "MediaCentral"","block_context":{"text":"MediaCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/mediacentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/EFuOQ2N.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/EFuOQ2N.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/EFuOQ2N.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6368,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/02\/03\/unions-unions-we-love-unions\/","url_meta":{"origin":14054,"position":5},"title":"Unions! Unions! We love unions!","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"February 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Um... not me. Some of the Register & Bee commenters have already started to BBQ this letter writer before I get the chance. That ain't gonna stop SouthsideCentral. Danville Register & Bee \"letter to the editor\": Right-to-work fallacy The commenters on this letter have said pretty much everything that I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Danville"","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14055,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14054\/revisions\/14055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}