Tuesday, December 1, 2009

A Library's Open System to Dealing with its Budget





Canton - not just home to IKEA, they also have quite a noteworthy public library.

Like any other city, Canton has seen its ups and downs during these tough economic times. For instance, take a look at the Budget,

2008 Budget: $6.4 Million

2009 Budget: $ 5.8 Million

2010 Budget: $ 5.2 Million

Notice a trend?

It does not take a mathematician to see that the past two years has led to more than $1.2 Million in budget cuts. At the same time, library usage is up 25% since 2007.The library knew it was going to have to cut the budget for 2010, so it did the unthinkable – in June the library Director, Eva M. Davis, posted an article explaining the situation and made an open forum where library patrons could voice their say about what should be cut or preserved. Davis responded to each post,

and the amount of participants was surprising - over 40 responses in two weeks!

By September, big decisions and budget cuts arrived. The library preserved its ability to stay open 7 days a week, with 72 hours of operation total. Reasons are listed for why the cuts were necessary and ranged from fewer property tax dollars (94% of the budget), to reducing the library millage rate from 1.5437 to 1.4980 - cutting taxes by $6 for every $100,000 in taxable value (millage rate is the amount per $1,ooo that is used to calculate taxes on property). There also still is fear of what will happen with the statewide revenue and its funding of MeL Cat, which affect statewide Databases and Interlibrary loans.

This library does not hide its facts, instead it forewarns patrons of things to come: longer lines, less staff, longer waits for books on hold, waiting on upgrade computers, less programs for computer classes & story time…the list for this library (like many others) continues.

PDF of 2010 Budget

Images from Flickr

5 comments:

  1. To me, it seems like such a strange thing to create a forum for what the public thinks should be cut. Many times it is about preserving what is necessary not what is popular. I would think that before opening a forum to the public, the library should evaluate how top heavy in the administrative department they are.

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  2. Lauren, you have a great point, and you'll be pleased to know that the library conducted an organizational study in the first half of 2009 to look at our departmental structures and identify areas where we could improve. We are in the middle of transitioning to that new organizational structure, which will be completed in 2010.

    Soliciting feedback from our community was one of several methods we used to tackle these deep budget cuts. I get that asking our residents to tell us their priorities for library services seems odd to some people. We have, and always have had, an incredibly supportive community who are heavy users of CPL. The public library is owned by our community, and as the cuts get deeper and affect our services to Canton residents, I firmly believe that they deserve the opportunity to share their priorities with us. We'll likely do this again in 2010 for the 2011 budget.

    Eva Davis, Director
    Canton Public Library

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  3. CPL’s mission statement from their website (http://www.cantonpl.org/) states “The Canton Public Library connects your community”. CPL constantly reevaluates and updates their services to continue to provide quality services for their dynamic community. They encourage feedback and participation from their community. If you want to learn more about CPL take a look at my PowerPoint presentation on Blackboard. CPL was one of the libraries I choose for the library visits assignment.

    I don’t think that it is odd that the library director, Eva Davis, asked for the community’s input on library cuts. By doing so she is informing the community why the library revenue is declining and is honest about how it will affect the library’s service and technology. For a library decision such as this people really want to voice their opinions and I think Eva does a good job by responding to all the comments to make them feel that their voice has been heard.

    I browsed through the comments. They are all from library users who really like/care about the library and have strong opinions about the future of this library. Many of the commenter’s would rather pay for materials (e.g. $1 for DVDs) or services (e.g. $5-$10 story times) or somehow donate or fundraise for the library then to sacrifice the quality or services the library offers. Others are very against paying for materials and services that are currently “free” to them now and some feel that staff positions should be cut or that staff should be paid less.

    Kristine Towne

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  5. This is a great way to include the community in the decision making process of services they need and utilize. I also think it this is a good way to avoid controversy and/or complaints from patron after the cuts.

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