Shape up or ship out!

Spring is here and once again the Providence Public Library is threatening to close some or all of its branches. Library officials say PPL is broke, that the library board has done enough and it is the city’s responsibility to fund the branches. Is this true? No! Is this acceptable? Absolutely not.

While sitting on unrestricted net assets worth more than $42 million and receiving public allocations this year of nearly $5.6 million from the city and the state, PPL once again is complaining that it is facing a deficit, that it does not have the money to operate the branches and that the solution is to reduce branch library services or eliminate them altogether.

This is ridiculous. The library is not broke; its management is deficient. The PPL only uses 6 percent of the value of its investments to fund current library operations; after that it just sits on its nest egg and waits for a handout from the city.

Whatever happened to the fundraising responsibility of the PPL and its board? The Steinberg Report (which analyzed the PPL’s fiscal problems in 2006) stated, “The role of the board needs to more prominently include fundraising and access to sources beyond the scope of the PPL staff.” Every charitable organization, whether small or large, educational or artistic, engages in fundraising projects from little bake sales to major walks and auctions. PPL has engaged in no fundraising activity other than its yearly letter asking for donations and a small book sale at the Central Library.

The problems of the PPL spring in large part from a stale, ingrown board that stubbornly resists change. The board insists that its mission is that of expanding the endowment of the library even at the expense of maintaining if not improving the operation of a library system to meets the needs of the people of Providence. The PPL treats any donation to the library (unless it is specifically given “for operating expenses of the branches”) as endowment and allocates only 6 percent of it to library support. This means that if you give a $100 donation to PPL, only $6 of it will go toward buying books, paying staff, etc. The rest of it is rolled into the endowment. This policy discourages donations to the library, especially from donors who want to help provide library services now!

The board is hostile to new ideas. Last year, as a result of public clamor demanding continued library services at the branches and a standoff between the PPL and the Providence City Council over public appointments to the PPL board as a condition for continued financial support from the city, the mayor brokered a compromise. The Library Partnership Advisory Committee was created to recommend solutions to the library’s fiscal problems. [The advisory committee,] which includes members of the public as well as representatives of the city and PPL, has met regularly, and the public members have offered a number of good ideas. The problem is that these proposals and recommendations are only partially presented to the PPL board and these suggestions have never received the board’s full consideration.

An excellent plan which respects the PPL’s reluctance to directly spend any of its capital yet enables the library to continue to present full services has been proposed by Prof. Maureen Romans, a former president of Mount Pleasant Friends of the Library who has studied the fiscal and administrative problems of the PPL closely. Romans suggests that $3 million from PPL’s discretionary funds (which grew significantly last year) be placed in reserve to be used over the next three years exclusively to pay for pension payments and children’s specialists — the two expenses which are creating the current fiscal crisis in the PPL’s budget. The borrowed money would be replenished with new fundraisers. As Romans rightly points out, “PPL’s biggest mistake would be to save every last penny of its investments while destroying the institution. It makes far better sense to spend some money to get through the next few years while preserving full library services for the people of Providence, which after all is the library’s mission.” This idea deserves careful examination by the PPL board.

Another proposal co-sponsored by the Library Reform Group, Smith Hill Friends, Mount Pleasant Friends and the PPL staff union has outlined methods to increase revenues and/or reduce costs by about $850,000. But to date, none of these ideas (including calling upon local businesses and universities to each sponsor a branch library and cutting the salaries of the top four PPL administrators by 20 percent) have been taken up by the PPL board.

The PPL is clearly suffering a crisis in fundraising and management. Rather than cutting services, the board should retire itself or at least set term limitations. (Howard Walker of Hope Valley, the most vociferous protector of the PPL’s failed policies, has been on the board for more than three decades!) Rather than cutting children’s specialists the board should replace current PPL Director Dale Thompson, whose poor management has contributed to the current financial predicament, with a service-oriented director whose first concern is the users of the library and who has a proven track record in fundraising. With these changes we might see a renewal of financial support for the library from the public.

Our city’s population is both young and poor with almost one-third of our population under the age of 20 and a quarter of Providence’s families living in poverty. Now is not the time to skimp on the branches which service our children who are the future of our city.

If PPL is not able or willing to carry out the mission of its charter of maintaining “a public library and such branches thereof … (to) furnish library services to provide information, facilitate education, contribute to the economic and cultural development of Rhode Island” then it should get out of the library business altogether. Now might be the time for the PPL to take the steps necessary to turn over all of its libraries and assets to a new organization that is capable of doing the work.

Shape up or ship out!

Kushner is the former president of the Friends of Rochambeau Branch Library and a founding member of the Library Reform Group.