Ford Heights has no library. The library taxing district takes in $20,000 per year, because the Chicago suburb is so small and so poor; its library closed some years ago, and the neighboring town cancelled its cooperative agreement because Ford Heights wasn’t keeping its end of the bargain. In the meantime, Ford Heights has been spending its library taxes on consulting fees, debt repayment and some potentially questionable expenses. But the town simply cannot afford a library (nor a police department — this was disbanded back in 2008), and in this respect it’s like Detroit: disregarding union pay scales, disregarding corruption, disregarding money spent on showpiece projects, the city simply has too little tax base, too much poverty in its residents to be able to provide city services in the way that one expects of a “civilized” American city or suburb.
Now, be that as it may, typing Ford Heights Illinois Church into Bing tells me that there are 15 churches in the town, and I have to admit to being surprised that, among those 15 churches, there hasn’t been any action to develop some modest community lending library in a Sunday School room — unless there is one, that the Trib didn’t report on, or if none of these churches have the resources to provide this, or if there simply is an assumption that the children have books available from school and the adults won’t read anyhow?
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