If you look carefully, you'll see that he's looking at a picture book ...

White yes, but also a little middle eastern maybe. Of course I'm due to fly out of town in a few days so everyone is starting to look middle eastern to me.

I received the same flyer. I have to disagree with the second point - that library funds can be siphoned off for non-library purposes. I don't think that's true for the current levy. In any case, I would guess Multnomah County will still provide support services to the library, such as accounting, budgeting, HR, etc. Even under a library district, MultCo will get it's share of funds through some sort of assessment or indirect rate. And, having worked on budgets at the county a number of years ago, I know that those rates can be manipulated so the county gets their pound of flesh, even under the library district set-up.

So, in other words this ballot measure is all about "Save the Libraries - Somebody else keeps stealing our funding!".

I haven't decided on this one yet. Our family uses the library constantly, and the recent decrease in hours has been inconvenient.

I guess it comes down to not knowing who to trust. They told us the last tax increase would keep the libraries open full time, and that obviously didn't happen, so if the library has it's own private pot of money, then hours and services should be protected.

On the other hand, if they have their own private pot of money, they can ask for more tax increases and probably get them, because Portland doesn't vote against libraries any more than we use umbrellas.

What to do? What to do?

Vote for it. It takes money away from "urban renewal" horsecrap.