The library system appears to have an annual operating budget of about $22 million. Given that they are building a new building, clearly there's a bunch of capital program money not mentioned on their web site budget page.
WM: The library successfully floated a referendum two years ago for $140 million; $110 mil for a new central library and $30 mil to bricks and mortar repairs, enlargements, code compliance, and/or refurbishing of 13 community libraries
The library executive gets paid about $130,000 a year.
Frankly, the argument that such large salaries are needed does not wash.
WM: Realistically, the new Director of the library could have gotten more because of the unfortunate position the library is in. In order to bring MPL into the 21st Century a different style, a different set of skills, a different outlook was more than necessary. It was not forthcoming from the library's previous leader, nor could that reasonably have been expected.
From my perspective, library systems go through a 3-part life cycle--young, middle-aged, and old. They repeat this cycle on a regular basis, though it's like the ice cap, it moves slowly. When the public library's most avid users say ho-hum, it's one of the "omens" if you will, that change needs to happen. Since October, 1997, MPL has piloted a change in how libraries function in less fortunate neighborhoods where a goodly percentage of the population is either blue/pink collar or no collar. They have learned some things through that process about some community libraries in the system.
When libraries are in the old stage, resistance to change is at its most difficult point. Meanness among staff is working very hard, inefficiencies are justified on an arbitrary basis, the board is at sea trying to figure out the text of what's not being said and which they can usually understand as "something else is not right here besides an over-ambitious building program, a deficit, and a stingy state. All those pressures were striking MPL when Ms. Hadley took the job as Director. By the time the paradigm shift is over, she will have earned twice her wages and then some. She is pushing a rock uphill with her nose. She also turned down a higher salary offered her by MPL.
The Library is a pint-sized operation in comparison.
WM: The issue is not that it's a pint or a quart, the issue is pint or quart of what. (1) The internet, for good or ill, is a reality that libraries can make very good use of and that the citizens can make good use of through the library, even those without the resources for a pc and concomitant expenses. (2) Libraries deal in information. With the population now supporting the library--and that's all of us--having changed so dramatically over the last 20 years or so, libraries have no course but to change. Too, information is outdated so quickly that expensive materials have to be changed more frequently than they had been in the past. [If you don't increase the materials budget, at least one community library gets stuck with the history books, maps, and related material explaining Batista's method of running Cuba as the branch's most current volume on the subject--this has happened.] (3) Public libraries have a further duty to support life long learning for the population and "leisure" reading and, to a lesser extent, related pursuits like music, art, architecture, engineering, etc.
What about the rest of the administrative structure?
WM: All administrative structures are more or less arbitrary anyway. That's why one hires a new director from outside the MPL system, (in this instance, and a first here, a non-librarian) so that that person can see the situation with "fresh eyes."
I don't have equivalent budget information for the schools and library.
WM: It's probably on their web sites, but I hate screwing around with budgets. If some costs bug me about the library, I just ask what's going on.
The City, the Library, the Park and the School don't regulate each other, there is no top-level plan or viewpoint except that provided by the mostly uninformed voters.
WM: Here's a little known "secret." On the whole, our city council members, our county commissioners, and our state and federal representatives are generally not enthusiastic public library users. There are, of course, exceptions to that rule of thumb. (I am not implying that they are not readers.) Having a separate library board, at the minuscule cost of something like $650/month/each of seven members, stands us in good stead.
Sure, these entities talk to each other, now and then, here and there. But there's not much preventing them from duplicating each others' services and roles at the edges of each's territory.
WM: That's a hard case to make at the library. Their mission is to serve the informational, leisure time, and life long learning to "level the playing field between the haves and the have nots." Therefore, some libraries can justify what you are calling mission creep as serving an new and entirely different population or getting serious about really serving those areas where "disposable income" is too often a laughable notion. Also, from what I've observed, the school, library, and park personnel talk to each other on at least a monthly basis in a formal sort of way so that they can help each other deal with roughly the same families.
That inefficient duplication just gets bigger every year that the voters do not rein them in.
WM: Muchos assumption here or is that el grande?. Just because it's duplicative does not mean that it's inefficient. The schools, libraries, and some of the parks have computers, homework helpers and other services for example. Maybe, if the flood of immigrants slows down, this will not be entirely necessary in another generation. But we definitely have enough kids that none of the three entities can contend with all of them all the time. And the kids have to be raised or reared. In some of our libraries, the patrons are as much as 60% kids. Their parents, too, need access to the same informational and etc. materials, but some of them they will need in Somali or Spanish or Hmong or Turkish or Arabic. When the immigrant flood slows, that will not be so necessary, but it is now. Very few books last even 10 years in a public library. Many books that are lendable, if not borrowed in the length of one year, are moved out to make room for those that will be read.
To a certain extent, the voter can be partially excused.
Many people probably have no idea just how important those park board and library board people are, especially those who are not home owners, who at least get a tax statement with different line items for each entity's tax assessment.
WM: Interestingly enough, those who use the library, whether they get a tax statement or their landlord gets the tax statement, know a lot about how important the libraries are. Some are there every day the library is open.
People on those boards and in those jobs at each of those entites want to keep their jobs, maybe even grow them.
WM: Of course they do, though I think you can hear it loud and clear that they don't want to "grow" their jobs as board members.
Maybe all the new government mandated paperwork really does require all that administrative overhead.
WM: You don't even want to know. It's a curse of bureaucracy; it lives on paper.
To summarize: Ignoring the City itself for the moment, I think the Schools, Libraries and Parks have grown outside their original charters.
WM: Yes, they probably have. That's because our needs and our children's needs have outgrown the paradigm and shifted from what they were even 20 years ago.
I believe that others among the management of each entity have mistakenly bought into the very wide-spread but false belief that one has to pay ridiculous sums of money to get quality leadership and management.
WM: The directors of libraries are not just people who are squeezed from a toothpaste tube someone stepped on. They actually are required to have a great number of skills. They also have 50 states worth of choices on where they want to live and work in this country alone. The really good ones are not going to undermine their own worth by taking dregs. Frankly, Minneapolis residents deserve a good Director of the MPL. Over the long haul, a good director, even at fancy wages, is worth paying a better price, she/he will save us money in the long run.
The "trust us" or "we know what's best for you" method of keeping us in the dark does not wash. If it's hidden, it's assumed to be self-serving at best, and unethical and illegal at worst.
WM: By whom? There's also a third and fourth possibility. Once, and this has been true in the past, city councils weren't all that interested and neither was the public. For those who, with intent, took an interest, the records were always available at the Attorney General's office. Yes, for elected officials, every thing they do could be self-serving. However, it's a form of enormous paranoia to fling about the notion that everyone and anyone is "on the pad." Most people are happy to go to work, do their jobs, and come home with a paycheck every two weeks. Stealing doesn't enter their minds. Remember that libraries are obsessive/compulsive about keeping records in order, it goes with the job, as they are about keeping everything in order. (This having things in order gets way outta hand with librarians--and nuns too, I've noticed.)
It's not a democracy unless the operation of government is transparent and open.
WM: Interesting comment about any library, but public libraries like MPL are the most democratic of our institutions.
As someone else mentioned, it's the kind of frustration felt when seeing what looks like waste and mismanagement of tax dollars that drives people to become Republicans and tax slashers
WM: With any complex institution, what is seeable from one's arm chair may not be the entire picture--same as the story of the elephant. If you're standing up against an elephant, it looks like something different from each place around it's body. You have to back up and look at the whole elephant to get any real notion of what an elephant looks like.
-- to the detriment of our whole society.
WM: I would take exception to that when applied to the public library. They've been asked to serve a population of some 380,000 people inside the city limits for $22 mil/annum. That's penurious, that's parsimonious, that's stingy and cheap, and we should be ashamed of ourselves for being such tight wads.
This is the US of A in the 21st century. We have given up much of our manual labor industries and deal in information and systems to carry it. That means we have to be able to develop skills rather than just brawn. Our city is, really for the first time in a long time, dealing with a burgeoningly diverse population more than 60% of whom, at a conservative estimate, will be living the bulk of their lives in an entirely 21st century world where the language of commerce is Standard American English, not their first language.
If we continue to underfeed libraries we will be trying to move with one foot nailed to the floor. Course, if our real mission, as a population, is to narrow the number of people competing for jobs in the future, then underfeeding libraries is one way to accomplish that. That's where my paranoia and our history lead me to obsess.
WizardMarks, Central
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