11 people to get layoff notices from county library system this week

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  The 89-year-old resident is a founding member of the Templeton Community Library Association and a longtime advocate of the benefits libraries bring to communities.

  Before Templeton’s last library, housed in its volunteer fire department, closed in the 1970s, she remembers one man who spent hours reading and talking to those who came and went.

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  Eight young men between the ages of 15 and 18 linked arms and intoned: “Truly, in the flow of human development, our community is a river and we who call ourselves people of humanity are standing deep in its water. And with amazing grace, we are beginning to recognize the ancient flow of human wisdom, as well as the indelible marks of human development.”

  So began the graduation that marked the beginning of the end of a nine-month journey of transformation for the young men, all of whom had been deemed at moderate risk by the criminal justice system.

  The Tuesday evening series of rituals defining these young men’s passage into responsibility was nothing short of life affirming for those of us sitting as a council of elders and the 150 friends and relatives who attended their once-troubled loved ones’ graduation from the Bakari Mentoring Program at Harmon Hall in the Cal Poly Performing Arts Center.

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  Community college and university students in San Luis Obispo County will likely see the cost of classes increase, residents will have reduced access to in-home care, and local school districts may have to make more cuts because of a loss of transportation funding as a result of deeper state budget cuts.

  Gov. Jerry Brown announced this week a plan to impose $980 million in midyear cuts to a dozen programs starting in January.

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