[Mpls] Your Minneapolis Public Library

[WizardMarks]

What R.T. Rybak and the city council propose to do to your public library in the name of keeping taxes low is a sin and a shame and they should all be held to account for this travesty of the "budgeting process."

I went to the library board hearing last night at East Lake Library. I'm furious with the mayor and the council as a result. The MPL had asked for a $1.5M increased budget over 2002. The proposed budget did not allow for the library to receive any increase over last year's allocation. This is not money for the new library. This is the cost of day to day operations. This is the books, etc. This is people's jobs.

This will gut library services for the entire city, since the projected time line is a total of 5 years of this budget dirth.. Last year, the library cut the book budget by $200,000.00 This year they will have to cut, at minimum, another $100,000. At most libraries (community libraries) it will become eight or fewer hours per day, 5 days a week. At district libraries (Walker, Washburn, East Lake, North Regional), hours will be cut and they, too, will have a five day week. The new library, when it is finished, will be a real big empty building. The staff will be stretched beyond endurance and good people will leave. We'll be so far behind in the acquisition of collection materials, we'll look as pitiful as the cobbler's shoeless children.

We were asked to look at the places where cuts could conceivably be made, and they stunk. I mean stunk to high heaven. i.e. ("$500,000 eliminate non-permanent staff --close central all evenings, close 10 medium and small libraries on Mondays). Non-permanent staff are 26 FTE part-time employees. We would lose no fewer than 52 employees. Monday is the busiest day of the week at all community and district libraries.

Here is the cost to you to maintain the library's budget request for 2003: It is 1/3 cent per $1,000 of your taxed real property. I'm being taxed at $118,000 in 2003. That means my additional tax to support running the library for the full $1.5M is forty cents. Mind you, this is in addition to the future taxation I agreed to take on by voting for the referendum. I don't even make $20,000 a year, but I'm more than willing to take on an additional tax burden of forty cents.

I'm none too pleased with the library board for being too wussy to stand up for the budget or to accept a cut of no more than 1/3 the request of $1.5M.

What really grinds my grits is that RT getting up at the recent conference on computers held here in Mpls. and praised the MPL to the high heavens for their foresight in putting computer learning centers at libraries. I detect a rather severe contradiction here. This stuff does not fall like manna from heaven. It gets paid for. To do it while we are trying to adjust to a huge flood of immigrants is unconscionable. To do it while the African American Men's Project is trying to change the paradigm for the black community is so counter-productive as to boggle the mind.

Minneapolitans have been castigating our school system for not turning out graduates, but the library has always assisted the community by helping kids (and adults) to graduation. We, the people, have gathered these resources that we say we need to make reasonable lives for ourselves. I would like the mayor, the council, and the library board to understand that this is nothing to screw around with. This is another case of superficial regard for the body politic by the leadership.

WizardMarks, Central



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