BPL Trustees to Meet Monday, June 21, 3:00 PM, to Discuss Keeping Four Libraries Open If Operating Funds Can Be Found
Responding to pressure by Boston city councillors, hounded by their constituents upset about proposed closings of four libraries, the Boston Public Library’s trustees have agreed to another public meeting to discuss keeping these branches open if the money for it can be found. It will be held Monday, June 21, at 3:00 PM, in the Orientation Room at the McKim Building in the Copley Library. The public is invited.
A number of residents, city councillors and state representatives, have asked the trustees and BPL president Amy Ryan on several different occasions whether libraries would remain in operation if state and city budget cuts, cited as the reason for closings and layoffs, would be reversed. The non-committal answers by BPL leadership led some to believe that the economic downturn, blamed for the proposed closings, was used as a convenient cover for a long-existing plan to shrink the BPL system of 26 branches by a third or less, thereby limiting public debate.
An interview with Mayor Menino by the Boston Globe editorial board in 2006, for example, long before the current financial pressures were felt, revealed that the mayor at that time already stated that “we have too many branches.” The mayor appoints all nine trustees. His budget chief, Lisa Signori, is in control of both the BPL annual budget and, since 2008, its trust accounts. The trust accounts, as well as the BPL Foundation’s account, usually meant to enrich the library beyond its operational budget allocated by the city, have been used in the past to pay for operational expenses, including a housing allowance of $20,000 for BPL president Ryan last year, and $500,000 in operational expenses for Dudley Library in 2004.
During a budget hearing before the City Council earlier this month, Councillor Felix Arroyo asked president Ryan again whether she would accept city or state funds to keep open the four libraries voted by the trustees to be closed (Faneuil, Orient Heights, Washington Village and Lower Mills). Saying she did not have the authority to decide, Ryan agreed to ask BPL trustees chair, Jeffrey Rudman, for an answer. The June 21st public meeting at Copley Library will focus on that question.
What is your take on the withholding of state funds in addition to the state funds that have been slashed so drastically in the past two years? Do you think these have contributed to the crisis the library faces? I hear that the state has reduced funding to the library from 8.9 mil to 2.4 mil over the past two years and is threatening to withhold the remaining amount. Is that true? Do you support that decision?
Hello Library Lover,
The crisis the library faces is caused by several matters: terrible governance at the BPL, and the economic downturn which is affecting all libraries. The governance problem consists of the nine BPL trustees being appointed by one elected official (the mayor) and not being vetted by any other professional or elected body for their ability to preserve, defend, innovate and grow an institution as important to the city’s intellectual and social life as the BPL. I am referring to entities like the city council, or a board that includes both library professionals, fundraisers, proven library advocates and elected officials. The result of the current structure is that the trustees are responsive ONLY to the mayor and his/her interests (it doesn’t matter who the mayor is) and not to library users, staff, taxpayers. If the mayor says “cut” the trustees cut. If the mayor says “shrink the system by a third” the trustees will do that. And they will hire the BPL president who will do it for them.
For the last two years, at the BPL trustees meetings, there has been no advocacy by the trustees to adequately fund the library, or to use the BPL trusts and the foundation appropriately (that is, to enrich the library beyond the city’s allocations instead of offsetting city expenses for the library’s operational budget). Nor has there been ANY advocacy during that time at the state or federal levels for funding, a dramatic change from before when two trustees actively and aggressively pursued state and federal funding (these trustees resigned after the previous BPL president was forced out by the mayor). When the city presented the BPL with its budget cuts in 2008 and 2009, none of the trustees asked to reverse those proposed cuts. I know: I was there.
Equally important, the BPL has refused to engage neighborhood libraries’ Friends associations, or any other community organization for that matter, in fundraising to keep the libraries open, staffed, or even to renovate them and add programming.
For example, the Friends of the South End Library actively pursued an assessment of the South End’s library needs with the BPL and the city since 2007. The BPL would do the assessment (for which it had solicited a proposal costing less than $40,000recommendations), and the Friends would raise funds for its to expand/improve/enhance SE Library services, whatever the recommendations turned out to be. The recently deceased trustee Ray Tye had offered to pay half. The BPL basically let the proposal die, despite numerous pledges to pay for the rest of it. The Friends could have paid for it, but we were concerned that all we would end up with was a proposal dying a slow death on the shelf. Our sense was that UNLESS the BPL/city had “skin in the game” and made a public gesture to partner with us as neighborhood Friends group by funding the proposal, it simply would not work. Unfortunately, we were right. Fortunately, we had not asked Southenders in a fundraising campaign to pay for something that was gathering dust somewhere.
Other library Friends groups can tell you similar stories of broken promises, delayed plans, highly politicized decision-making as to which neighborhood will have its libraries renovated and which ones won’t (the two newest libraries were opened during the mayor’s reelection campaign last year in politically critically important areas, Roxbury and Dorchester while library projects in East Boston and Jamaica Plain encountered delay after delay).
In other words, economic pressures contributed to the difficulties but the BPL never ASKED for money from the state or anyone else since 2008. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
State reps, upset over the BPL’s proposal to shut libraries without an adequate public debate preceding such proposals, as well as the BPL’s refusal to say they would keep the libraries open EVEN IF STATE FUNDING WERE RESTORED, created an amendment to withhold funding unless all libraries remain open. It is a power play, not a financial statement any of the state reps, all library advocates, want to make. It reflects the state reps’ frustration with the BPL’s lack of sensitivity to the public process.
As such, I support the amendment, with deep regrets that the poor governance at the BPL has brought us to this point. In the meantime, I am pretty confident that both the city council and the state reps are working on a solution that will begin to save the libraries in Boston and, I hope, to make them thrive as they do in other cities and towns, also battered by the economy.
For that reason, too, I support a complete overhaul of the BPL’s governance by means of a public process, to include appointment and confirmation of top-notch trustees who are true advocates for the Copley library and all its branches. Trustees who only listen to the budget concerns of the administration, without aggressively pursuing other funding streams at state, federal, city and neighborhood levels, should be a thing of the past.
Interesting take. I do tend to think that librarians know the best way to run a library, so I’m particularly concerned that so many politicians are making the “power plays” you mention. It’s distressing to say the least. And since the trustees are legally forbidden from fund raising, we, the people of Boston, are counting on people like you to raise the funds necessary.
I’m sure that you support the work that the librarians do, so please continue to back the decisions that the Boston librarians make to keep delivering service to the people of our city. The interference of politicians is doing no one any good. It’s only guaranteeing the elimination of necessary services to the city.
Your observation that “librarians know the best way to run a library” flies in the face of the deluge of outraged comments received by our state and local representatives, and expressed at the dozens of public hearings and meetings since February, protesting the “librarians” proposals. Obviously, the “librarians” at the BPL are missing a critical piece of information to satisfy the users of the public library.
I doubt trustees are legally forbidden to raise funds, as they raised tens of millions until 2008. But if indeed it is illegal, I count on our state and local elected officials to change that law and make fundraising mandatory.
While they’re at it, I’d urge them to enforce rules governing public charities so that trustees can no longer use the BPL Foundation for the private benefit of BPL executives. This was done on numerous occasions, according to one current trustee, most recently last year, when trustees unanimously approved a $20,000 housing allowance for Amy Ryan to be paid out of the BPL Foundation’s account. For this reason and others I would not count very much on “people like” me to raise funds for the BPL.
So, what is the purpose of this friends organization if not to support the library and raise funds for it?
Wow. How can I support or trust an organization that doesn’t even state its mission? Even when asked a simple question such as the one I posed?
Another question: if you are not in the business of fund raising, and the trustees are not permitted to do so, and the foundation is not doing a good job of it, and fund raising can’t support operational costs, and the city has only so much cash (especially after the fire fighter contract), and the state has cut millions and wants to withhold *more* … why do you expect that some significant cuts won’t be made? And why do you not blame yourself?