BRIDGEPORT — Forty-seven year-old Gerson Torres got a library card for the first time Wednesday night.

In earlier years, Torres' pursuits were far from literary — addiction to illegal drugs and jail time for more years than he can recall.

But Torres, released a month ago after serving nine months of a one-year sentence violating probation, said he's turning his life around with the help of the city's library system and the Project Safe Neighborhood initiative.

But people like Torres won't have such easy access to the public libraries if Mayor Bill Finch's proposed cut to the library budget for 2008-09 is approved, said Denise Holley, a state probation officer who works with the program.

"We're just trying to keep guns off the street," she said. "The library is very much used by the community."

Finch's proposed cut would force the closure of three branches, stop the reopening of another and limit the hours at the main Burroughs and Saden Memorial Library, city Librarian Scott Hughes said previously. Any program using the library system, such as Safe Neighborhood, could be affected.

"Use your library, because if you don't use it, you'll lose it," Hughes told Torres and 89 other felons gathered for the Safe Neighborhood program's monthly informational meeting.

A criminal record isn't an obstacle to getting a library card, he said.

"You come in here with a clean slate," Hughes said.

The librarian said he's allowed the program to use the library

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because "it's a natural fit."

"We're providing an opportunity for people to turn their lives around," Hughes said. The partnership of the library and the Safe Neighborhood project is a good one, Torres said, offering access to re-entry programs he wouldn't have heard of before.

"The first thing I did today is get my library card," Torres said. He used the card to check out a book about radio personality Howard Stern and one about the New York Yankees.

"Baseball, I love it," he said. He added he plans to enroll in a parent-skills program he learned about during the meeting. He is the father of six children, and one grandchild on the way.

The Safe Neighborhood program involves prosecutors and police, probation and parole officers in reducing gun violence, taking illegally carried guns off the street and prosecuting felons carrying guns or ammunition.

One of its goals is to let felons know right away that a conviction on firearms charges means a minimum mandatory jail term as long as 10 years.

The informational meetings, required for felons, get that message across, but aren't designed to scare them, police and prosecutors said.

"We're going to provide you information to make good choices," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Felice Duffy, who works in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport. "Stay away from drugs and guns."

Speakers like Craig Kelly, president of the Greater Bridgeport chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and representatives from re-entry programs followed her, describing options for the felons and urging them to better themselves.

"Make yourself available. Come in here, man," Kelly said of the library. "Anything you want can be found in a book."

"At one point, they didn't allow our ancestors to read," he said, referring to black slaves in America.