Imagine Livermore Without a Library...

Officially, it is known as Assembly Bill 5 and titled: The Homeless Bill of Rights.

Imagine this: you're on your way with your very young child to go to Monday Night Story Time at the Livermore Public Library (which runs fall through mid spring)... you get there, and you see all these tents! Tents, hundreds of cigarette butts, maybe a couple of people drinking... and they all look homeless... well, and low and behold, you're right! They are exactly what they look like! Why are they allowed to stay?

Right now, pitch a tent in front of City Hall or the Library and the police will be on you like: NOW!

But if Amiano's Homeless Bill of Rights passes: nobody can tell them to leave. NOBODY!

Sure, a couple of good things in it, maybe... getting a fine for sleeping in your car... not fun.

But, wait a minute, there is something called a Hygiene Center mandated in this bill! So, we get showers and bathrooms for the homeless somewhere in Livermore (nevermind that the Churches already do this, now the City has to do it now!). As it stands now, the Homeless have access to showers, Monday Morning, Wednesday Afternoon and Friday Morning in three different churches around Livermore. They open for a few hours, people show up, get showered, and leave.

But the hygiene center will have to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I don't know about you, but what I'm imagining is a great place to set up shop to sell whatever injectable drug there is... maybe Meth, maybe Heroine. Great place that's always there! The police will have to have a special detail just to make it any kind of safe.

And the churches that do the work now, which cost you tax payers NOTHING! Those programs will most likely go away entirely, since there will be no need for them!

And I'm sorry, folks, I don't trust our city government to manage anything like this with any degree of competence. The city of Livermore does nothing, nada, zero for the homeless and I'm telling you: this is for the best! Keeping the city out of the homeless business is the way I like it and you should know by now: I am homeless!

But let's get back to the Livermore Public Library issue for a minute. I'm like a lot of Livermorons... I looove me some LPL! It is the best library in the SF Bay Area, and that is not hyperbole (hyperbole = blowing smoke up your a.... for you old time Livermorons). It simply is the best Library in the Bay Area. Do a tour and find one better, I challenge you. One with the same or longer hours, this kind of staff, 24/7 wifi (and Tommie's Cafe... for crying out loud, whoever thought of attaching a coffee shop aught to get a Nobel Prize for Ingenuity)...

Now imagine the scene I described above. How many Library Patrons do you think LPL will entertain? How soon will hours be cut back? How many Librarians will lose their jobs?

Now, I'm a guy who's not at all fond of the average government worker, but we're talking about a Library... ours! I see AB5 putting something in danger that I dearly love... and frankly, not going to be quiet about it... no sir...

You'll find the text of AB5 Here:
http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=2013...