Stung By State and City Cuts, Reading (PA) PL Plans To Close All Branches

26% budget cut next year; students, advocates hope for new funding

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 10/26/2009

• Three branches, bookmobile to close
• Mayor meets with schoolchildren
• Steady decline in funding, jobs, materials

While libraries around the state of Pennsylvania have been hampered by a 20% cut in state support, the Reading Public Library (RPL) has been hit especially hard, losing not just state funds but the entire support from the hard-hit city, which contributes $450,000, and causing the planned closure of all three branches and the bookmobile. Only the main library (right) will remain open. 

RPL still has significant county support, but those cuts should result in an overall decline in funding from $2.7 million to $2 million, or some 26%. The library serves a population of 82,000 in Reading—about $33 per capita now and $24 next year—-and also serves as the district center for Berks County, which has a population of 400,000.

Local response
The closures, planned for the end of the year, have generated much local concern, with a groundswell of support for the library, director Frank Kasprowicz told LJ. Volunteer supporters on October 30 will distribute materials about the budget cuts in an effort to generate more advocacy and support.

Meanwhile, Kasprowicz said that the libraries would have to be boarded up to protect the books and computers from vandalism, and “we are computing what it would cost to keep them open.” 

"This [Southeast branch] library [left] is the hub of the neighborhood, one of the best things we have in the city," resident Lillian L. Jenks told the Reading Eagle. Last week, 150 schoolchildren, who collected change and dollar bills to save the branches, met with Mayor Tom McMahon at the Northeast Branch, the Eagle reported.

Details on cuts
While the main library has 22,722 “assignable square feet for public service, according to Kasprowicz, the other branches are smaller: 7557, 7200, and 1620 square feet (the Northwest branch, below). They account for more than 40 percent of total circulation, however, and, since that number helps drive state support, their closure would likely reduce such aid.

The city’s $450,000 helps support full-time positions and utility costs, Kasprowicz said, and the loss of that funding represents continued decline. 

In 21 years, he said, “we’ve lost over half of our professional staff.” The branches used to be run by professionals, according to the director, but are now run by paraprofessionals. Same for YA and children’s services. (One branch staffer did complete an MLS, Kasprowicz said, but is still being paid as a clerk, because that professional position does not exist.)

This year, the library started with 23 full-time positions, but it lost three in January and will cut another nine jobs. The county, which contributes $900,000, will support the remaining 11 positions.

As in some other libraries, Kasprowicz chose to cut not in reverse order of seniority—“which would’ve taken 60% of reference department”—but instead eliminated nonprofessionals. Meanwhile, state funding pays for part-time positions, but that number also has been cut, from 40 to 32, with another 13 seeing their hours reduced.

The library board this year committed $250,000 of private funds to balance the budget, but it’s not easy to go to that well, as the library’s endowment has declined with the stock market. 

Library remains vital
The painful irony, to Kasprowicz, is that the library, as elsewhere in the country, is seeing more use than ever, and his staffers, both professional and paraprofessionals, have been winning statewide honors and recognition for programs and services, including serving job seekers and bookmobile outreach for seniors

The materials budget, he said, was initially budgeted at $371,000, then cut to $300,000 and $261,000, with further cuts in the offing. “If we have to take more out of those areas to protect people [from losing positions], I will do that,” he said. “I’m very proud of our people for hanging in there.”