Lean Times

Everyone's a critic, especially when it comes to politicians. And while I, too, enjoy taking jabs at elected officials, I must commend our Mayor on his revised budget. The city's $179M shortfall is unprecedented, and cuts have to be made. As everyone knows I'm a library groupie, and am always interested in how the city's finances will impact the thirty-six locales. Last week, Mayor Sanders proposed pairing up some libraries and having them open on alternate days. Which I thought was pretty creative. Today, a revised budget was unveiled, and instead of closing some branches for full days, hours will be reduced at all branches to thirty-six per week. Of course this doesn't make me happy, but it seems like an equitable way to save money and minimally impact the system. Last year's proposal to close some branches was extremely unpopular.

The budget crisis will also affect the library system by changing the overdue fine collection process from three US mail letters to one before sending the library user's account to collection. I wonder how many overdue books it would take to reap $179M in fines?