I am writing to oppose the proposed cuts to the Lewiston Public Library’s budget.

Benjamin Franklin started our first public library in Philadelphia in 1731. He later wrote, “This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set apart an hour or two each day, and thus repair’d in some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me.”

Libraries are the most cost-effective and effective means to empower those who don’t have many resources. Visit the Lewiston library, any day, and see people accessing the internet to learn, apply for jobs, fill our forms for assistance, etc. Talk to the librarians for countless examples of how people depend on library resources for improving their lives in so many ways.

Cutting library hours would save very little money. It’s a good example of “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.”

Bill Frayer, Lewiston