Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Public In Dark about Library Danger

The City of Minneapolis provides a pie chart to illustrate the recommended $1.3 billion 2007 budget. It reveals at a glance the fat and thin slices, fat for more money, thin for less.
Among the thin slices of two-percent or less are Health & Family Support, Regulatory Services, the City Attorney, Other City Services, Other Boards, and the Library Board. That’s two cents or less of the city dollar.
Among the fat slices of nine-percent or more are the Police Department, Public Works, Debt Service, and Community Planning and Economic Development. That’s almost a dime or more of the city dollar.
The Mayor’s recommended revenue for the Library Board is $22.8 million, a 2.4% sliver of an increase over the adopted budget of 2006. In the details are differences between how the library calculates revenue and how the City did its calculations. It’s safe to say that the real increase is not an increase at all, given rising costs. The 2007 proposed budget is radically insufficient to support the operations of the Minneapolis library system.
So what is the Library Board to do?
Because the Library Board is an independently elected board in Minneapolis, voters have been asking why the Board is not able to set its own tax levy, subject to the approval of Board of Estimate and Taxation. Some of the answer lies in the City Charter itself.
The Charter is Minneapolis’ Constitution that describes the powers the people of the city give their city government. In the Charter, Minneapolis citizens give the Library Board the power to levy taxes for its operating requirements. This, as with all levy intentions, goes to the Board of Estimate and Taxation, which sets the annual levy limit for the city for the year.
This process is intended to give the boards their independence and ability to represent all Minneapolis citizens in the operation of the library system. Six of the eight Library Board Trustees, as they are called, are elected in citywide elections. They do not represent districts or wards, but all of the citizens of the city.
Under then Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, with no doubt advice from the city’s finance department, a formula was fashioned to thwart the Charter process for the independent boards. The formula held property tax increases to 3% and gave the Mayor and city council authority to adjust the Local Government Aid (LGA) portion of the library’s revenue. This meant that if the library raised property taxes, approved by the Board of Estimate and Taxation, the city would then reduce the amount of LGA by the same amount. The net outcome would be zero. Power is stripped from the Library Board.
Even setting aside the fact that the 1994 City Council resolution set in place policy by the numbers instead of policy by the wishes of the citizens for the service levels they desired, the practice over the past 12 years has resulted in a Library Board that can only offer representation without taxation. It is hobbled from exercising the wishes of the public as stated in the City Charter.
Transferring the power of the purse to the City Council was not intended in the language of the Charter. The council members are elected in wards and have no citywide constituency as the Library Board does. And, there is little collegiality between the City Council and the Library Board. So opportunities for collaboration and negotiation as peers are absent in the relationship. The Library Board is reduced to the status of a supplicant, again a position not envisioned in the Charter nor expressing the intention of the citizens of Minneapolis.
In 2002, the City Council increased the property tax levy limit to 4% and kept the LGA controls firmly in its hands. None of this envisioned a radical change in the LGA amount coming to the City, nor did the Council’s policy change even after the devastation to the library system made the case that policy by the numbers does not work for all systems. Further, the wishes of the citizens were ignored.
In 2003, the Library Board accepted what it thought was the desire of Minneapolitans and kept all libraries open in 2004, even though this meant the loss of over 70 staff and workers. Short hours forced library users to fit their needs into the very short library hour schedule. No one was happy.
Faced with irrefutable evidence that future budgets will fall short of providing for the entire library system, some in the City Council say sell the new Central Library or close and sell some of the community libraries, a prospect the Council has made likely by its control of the library’s budget.
What is really at issue here is that the public knows little about the annual budgeting process of the City. The City Charter is a mystery to the greater majority of the citizens. When there is a lack of transparency in how the City does its business, and when policies are made that are expected to fit every service in every situation, the people are no longer served well.
Citizens should be assured that their elected public officials are not gathering power to themselves inappropriately.

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