My friend Sally reads newspapers at the library. She says she’s too cheap to subscribe so she heads to her branch for her daily hit. The downtown moms take their kids to story hour at the branch libraries. They do it for the children but also for themselves, meeting other mothers and talking about the matters mothers have always discussed. More than 631,000 times last year Bostonians went to a library to log on. Many of them don’t have a computer at home.

As a devoted reader of obscure materials, I use the library mostly online. I visit BPL.org, click on electronic resources, choose a  journal or a subject, and type my BPL card number into the box. Such research comprised some of the library’s 5.2 million website visits last year.

Is this all about to go away? No. But tomorrow starting at 8 a.m. the Boston Public Library trustees will listen to options that address how to reduce costs at their 162-year-old institution. Cost-cutting is necessary mostly because the state will reduce library funding from $8.9 million in FY 2009 to $2.4 million in 2011. The library’s budget was $48 million in 2009. In 2011 it will be $38.7 million.

The options are what you’d expect: reduce hours at 18 libraries and allow nine to remain fully open or close up to 10 branches while beefing up the rest. All this is in addition to reducing costs in such areas as cleaning, purchasing and programming.

On Friday, the trustees will vote on how to proceed. The recommendations will then go to the city council and the mayor. It is not a pretty sight, but what else can they do? The library is required by law to balance its budget.

There has been a lot of griping, especially by some library users: Keep my branch library open, no matter what. It’s not that library officials don’t understand how much libraries mean to people. After all, they went to library school because they love libraries.

But where will the city and state get the money that advocates want for their branch? Shall we take it from roads, bridges and dams? What about from health care? How about from schools? What about getting rid of all the “waste” in state and city government?

The problem is that the roads, health care and schools need the funding too. And there’s waste, but it seems negligible. Watch the guys come reliably down the street at the appointed times collecting trash and recyclables. Not much waste there. Go to community meetings and meet state and city employees who have to spend yet another evening with you instead of at home. Unless you’re a chronic complainer, you won’t find waste there either. In fact, there’s probably more waste in your own refrigerator than there is right now in either state or city government.

What I don’t hear from those who want to protect their branch libraries is how they propose to pay for it. Raise the city’s property taxes so your library won’t have to close? No one I’ve heard has suggested that. One union official proposed increasing the hospitals’ and universities’ payments in lieu of taxes. That’s what they always say.

The bellowing to which the anti-tax, anti-government crowd has subjected us has cowed our elected officials. They won’t raise taxes, just fees.

My favorite solution to declining resources for our communities would be to confiscate half the earnings of David Tepper, George Soros, James Simons, John Paulson, Steve Cohen, Carl Icahn and Edward Lampert, hedge fund managers, all of whom last week were reported to have pulled in more than $1 billion last year. No man needs that much money unless he thinks it will compensate for shaky self esteem or a certain underperforming body part. We can also hope for an improving economy that raises real property values, stimulates sales, and raises incomes—all of which will bring in more taxes to pay for libraries and the other services that make our communities work. But there is no free ride. So if you’re out demonstrating to keep your branch library open, hold a sign saying you’re willing to see your taxes raised to pay for it.