Public Meetings with No Choices

From September 14 to September 25, five public meetings were conducted by the Minneapolis Library Board to hear what the public thinks of its 2007 to 2009 budget approaches for the library system. Because the Library must have an annual balanced budget, continuing shortages of revenue going back as early as 1994 are forcing damaging changes to the entire system, changes that now include selling libraries for one-time revenues.
In addition to the public meetings, the library conducted a survey that was available to all library patrons either online or in paper form, displayed at all Minneapolis libraries. The survey was offered in multiple languages. Further, four listening sessions with library patrons, drawn from the roster of those who hold library cards were conducted. And finally, an online discussion forum is available on the library’s website.
The Library Board intends that these efforts open the discussion about the operating budget as broadly as possible to the Minneapolis public. This is an important function of the Library Board because its work comes under the Minneapolis Charter, the City’s 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 members are elected in citywide elections. They do not represent districts or wards, but all of the citizens of the city.
As with all Constitutions in our country at least, the granted powers in the Charter result in representative government. As the elected Library Board members sit in session and govern, they are acting on behalf of all of the citizens of Minneapolis. This is a great and distinguished privilege, one not to be taken lightly, nor one to be confined into smaller and smaller spaces, slipping away from public control.
Yet this appears to be the case when it comes to controlling the annual budget of the library system. The public’s ability to tax itself for high quality library services has been thwarted. It was done so easily because voters are largely unaware of the limiting controls placed on the Library Board’s fiscal role under the Charter. This has resulted in the long history of shortchanging libraries.
When this fact was brought to the attention of the City Council’s Ways and Means Committee in October 2005, and along with it the suggestion that while the damage done may not have been anyone’s fault, future damage to the library if sustained, could be considerable. That was the awakening point, which the City Council should have taken to heart and reconsidered its one-size-fits-all policy of capping annual budget increases while using the Local Government Aid allocation to Minneapolis to control budget levels. One fiscal policy does not fit all systems in the city.
Placing a noose around the library system and pulling it tighter and tighter each year has been the result. But with irrefutable evidence at hand that the library system is on the brink of breaking apart, the recommendation from the City is to go ahead and break apart. The only choice now left to the independently elected Library Board is to decide which library stands and which library falls. That is not the choice given to the Library Board in the Charter.
On the subject of library buildings, the voters have already spoken. They approved a new Central Library and renovations to all existing community libraries. But when they voted on these improvements, they did not know (or very few knew) that back in 1994, the City Council had passed a resolution affecting the Library Board, among others. 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 was zero. Power was stripped from the Library Board.
So what have citizens been saying in this last round of public meetings? At the Nokomis meeting on September 19th, held at a nearby Methodist Church, there was a group of about 70. Two comments stand out.
“If the City were going to close down and there weren’t going to be any people living here – then some of the alternative approaches (presented) would make sense.”
And from State Senator Wes Skogland: “The reason not to close libraries is that they will do it again. You will take care of their (the City’s) problem for them.”
In the Southeast community, with its advantageous proximity to the University of Minnesota, the outstanding public schools of the old Southeast Alternatives, a generational turnover is underway, likely to pick up its pace as we move further into the century. The Southeast Library may not be in the best building it could be. There are few, if any options for expansion and enhancement. But the idea of a library, the presence of a public place of free learning, fits exceedingly well in this community that is the home of a diverse population, growing numbers of new families and a cultural strain that reveres soccer over football and books over video games. Said a Somali elder at the Nokomis meeting: “When we close libraries, we close the door on knowledge and we close the door on life.”