One Week To Speak Up To Save The LA Public Library Budget

SaveLAPL:
www.saveLAPL.org

Citizens using the tools provided by the SaveLAPL website I helped launched have already made a difference in the future of the Los Angeles Public Library: the proposed $1-per-book inter-branch transfer fee has been withdrawn in favor of a nickel increase in daily late fines, and a book buying fund was created by the Library Foundation.

But the Library’s funding still faces drastic cuts when Mayor Villaraigosa’s budget goes before City Council’s Budget & Finance Committee on May 1st. As citizens of Los Angeles or interested outsiders, you have one week in which to tell the Mayor and members of this Committee how important the Library is to you, and to urge them to reconsider some of the more serious cuts facing this essential educational institution; then we’ll have until May 19 to get the word out to the full City Council.

SaveLAPL:
www.saveLAPL.org

Please use the SaveLAPL site to email the Mayor and the members of the Budget & Finance Committee, urging them to find additional money in the budget to fund the Library as befits the primary free intellectual resource of this great metropolis. City Librarian Fontayne Holmes will address the Committee and ask that the Library’s book budget be restored and regional branches remain open on Sunday to serve their communities. Her pleas will be more likely to be heard if they are also made by citizens who use the library.

These are the threats facing LAPL if the budget goes through without change:

1. The eight regional branch libraries would be closed on Sundays, eliminating 36.5 staff positions. The branches effected are North Hollywood, Mid-Valley Regional, Arroyo Seco, West Los Angeles, Hollywood (Goldwyn Branch), Exposition Park, San Pedro and West Valley.

2. The book buying budget will be slashed by $2 million, to $7.7 million for all branches for the entire fiscal year (July to June). This represents a 22% cut from last year’s book budget of $9.8 million (which ran out in February), and a 33% cut from the $11.4 million book budget of two years ago. Please note that as of 2006, before these cuts, Los Angeles was already among the poorest performing North American cities with populations over one million when it came to library expenditures per citizen, spending just $2.56 per capita. Since 2006, LA has fallen from #19 to #23 on this list of 25 cities. Compare LA to New York ($3.90), San Diego ($3.92), Broward County ($4.14), Chicago ($4.29), Hawaii ($4.92), Philadelphia ($5.13), Las Vegas ($6.73) and King County, WA ($8.84) and it’s obvious how woefully under-funded LAPL has been and continues to be.

3. All civilian city employees, which includes Library staff, will be subject to “short-term layoff,” which according to the Mayor, “could take the form of mandatory furlough days or reduced work weeks.” In light of this plan, an additional $1.4 million is being deducted from the library budget.

The Mayor’s budget goes before City Council’s Budget & Finance Committee beginning April 28. The Library’s budget hearing is scheduled for May 1, and it may be continued to May 2. The budget, with the committee recommendations, will go to the full Council the week of May 19. June 13 is the deadline for adoption of the budget by the Mayor and Council.

Save.LAPL.org is once again urging people to contact the Mayor and Budget & Finance Committee members, this time to restore funds to the Library budget, keep branch libraries open on Sunday, and to protect the jobs of the librarians and support staff who keep the Library running.

thanks for reading, signing and passing this along,
Kim Cooper
SaveLAPL
www.saveLAPL.org