The council seems to have successfully sold the notion that the only way to pay for some services is by cutting others. Am sure this is tricky budgeting but I don't completely buy this political notion. Apart from the obvious raising of rates (which they can do with an elected mayor), I feel certain that there are many admin cost savings and revenue raising projects that they could explore too, especially if they club together with other councils (for instance, why have completely separate library services?).

Having said that, I think that robbrockley has a valid point. The question is not do you want to preserve a council library service (practically everyone will say yes to that), rather are you prepared to pay for it? Perhaps more pertinently, how?

For the record, am happy to continue supporting libraries through rates (for their social function). This is because we hardly ever use them due to collective family inability to return books before the due date. It works out cheaper to buy them second hand!