Everyone should support the Racine Public Library's plan for a branch and its desire that the City of Racine sell it some land used by the Racine Water and Wastewater Utility. Everyone should even support selling the land to the library for $1 because having a branch library would be a boon to the area, would reflect the importance of library service and would make that much more money available for a new building. It's just that we should see some other progress before we start laying bricks.

There is nothing wrong with preparing for a building program, but there are other priorities which the library should address. Several months ago The Journal Times chronicled how far behind our public library has fallen in comparison to state standards and nearby libraries.

Racine Public Library has trimmed the number of hours that it is open to the public, and for only three of eight categories does it provide the basic service called for in voluntary state standards. The Burlington Public Library meets all those standards and in two-thirds of the categories reaches the top levels. The Kenosha Public Library has had budget increases of several percent for the past several years and operates a number of branches.

Kenosha is different, of course. Its population is increasing. Racine's isn't, and Racine's library revenue from government, including a property tax on people who don't have a community library, has remained relatively constant. Not that anyone needs reminding, but there is also the current turmoil in financial markets and its potential to curb government revenue still further.

It's a fine idea to propose a branch for Mount Pleasant. It would move a much-desired service closer to growing suburban populations and to people who live on the edges of the City of Racine. But aside from the money required to build a new branch, the library would have to annually provide more money for books, magazines, staff, and all the other continuing costs of operations.

What we should have before rushing headlong into construction planning is a financial plan summarizing how the library intends to recover from its current service deficits, because the danger is that if a branch is built without adequate operational resources it will either slowly drain the life from the main library Downtown or will have to be closed.

So yes, we by all means do need to expand the public library. As noted in this space several months ago, we need to invest in our libraries because they are a garden of knowledge which helps nurture the talent of our people, which in turn makes this area more attractive to employers. We need all this, but we need responsibility first.