Its Time to Plan, Not Close

Chuck Tuner, City Councillor

All systems evolve over time. As a philosopher once said, “The only constant on the earth is change”. Thus, we want and need leaders who have vision; who dare to gaze into the future in order to understand what needs to be done today.

From that perspective, I applaud Mayor Menino and BPL President Amy Ryan for their willingness to develop their vision of a 21st century library system. However, while both have their areas of expertise and authority, I do not believe that they have a right to impose their vision without dialogue with the people who use the system. Top down planning has proven itself to be not only ineffective but also destructive.

We are being told that the ship is sinking financially; we are being told that the only answer is to either completely close eight to ten libraries (over a 1/3 of the branches) or so drastically curtail the hours of operation at 18 branches (2/3 of the branches) that people would feel that they were watching the branches slowly die.

Is the ship sinking financially? Is there no other answer than to cut the heart out of our library system? I don’t think so! The 3.6 million dollar deficit represents approximately 8% of the library’s budget. Last year, the Mayor and the BPS Superintendent worked together to put $45 million dollars into the school department’s budget in order to provide stability as the Superintendent implemented her plan of change. My question has been and continues to be, if the Mayor could take $45 million from reserves last year to fill an 18% gap in the school department budget, why can’t the Mayor take $3.6 million from this year to fill the library system’s 8% gap.

In addition, we only have three months left in this fiscal year, yet the library system potentially has an $800 thousand dollar surplus in energy costs and the Department of Public Works, I have been told, has approximately $7 million dollars left in the snow removal line. These are two additional examples that the ability to identify the $3.6 is not necessarily as difficult as we are being told. Perhaps, the sky is not falling despite the predictions.

Let me be clear. I am not making fun of the financial situation that the Mayor and the BPL President find themselves in. Stabilizing any budget in these difficult times is hard. However, my point is that hard times force people to define their priorities. Unfortunately, keeping the branches open is not a priority of the Mayor and BPL President. This is why it has been so encouraging to see people standing up and defending not just their branch but the integrity of the system.

Let me close by emphasizing that this year is not the year to close 10, 8, 5, 3, or even 1 branch. This is the year to stabilize the library’s budget and use year to plan with the Friends groups that are supporting each of the branches. This is a moment to put confidence in the rationality of the people of our City and our neighbors and bring them to the table to design a library system that works not only for Boston, the world class city, but also works for the neighborhoods that are trying to survive the weight of a financial crisis that they didn’t create.”

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