The City Council approved the budget for all City departments last night at their regular Council session. The vote was 13 in favor and 2 opposed. No changes were made to the budget which the Mayor recommended for the library. The good news is that all of our services will stay as they are this year, with staffing and operations at the same level. Unfortunately, the reduction taken in the library materials budget also still holds. This represents $1M fewer General Revenue dollars for materials. I anticipate we will spend some of our state appropriation dollars on materials but there are not sufficient funds available to "make up" the $1M reduction and so there will be fewer titles and copies of titles purchased in all formats. We also expect to reduce the number of periodical titles we will be able to subscribe to and there will be fewer electronic databases. Unit managers and Charlene Adkins and her staff have been working on what this new, reduced budget will look like and will now move ahead to finalize it.
I want to recognize the tremendous support JPL has received from our Library Board who worked very hard in support of this budget and that of the Friends of the Library who turned in 9,000 signatures to the City Council in support of restoring the "book" budget.
Our customers regularly tell us how important we are to them - in finding a job, keeping up with email or current news in newspapers and magazines, in providing a place to study and a wonderful selection of books, DVD's, CD's and audiobooks (now also downloadable!) for them to read and listen to. As we enter into a new fiscal year it will be important for each of us to retain that community support, to stay customer focused and to become more involved in the communities we serve. Our goal must be a renewed community commitment to ensuring that JPL can continue to be the best it can be!
Barbara
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3 comments:
To reduce costs has any consideration been given to having the branch manager, pic, or clerical supervisor take the money deposit to the tax collector's office. I remember Dunbar's service was quite costly.
Another suggestion in regards to a cost cutting measure that would save money would be having the Branch Manager, PIC, or clerical supervisor count the copier money. This was already done on a short basis when we lost the contract with IKON.
Brian: at this time we are not considering asking managers or others to take the monies taken in at the libraries to the Tax Collector's Office.
However, on your other point about having staff count the money taken in by the copiers and VCA's, we are considering having staff do this to save costs in our contract. I have asked Ms. Williams and Mr. King to make a recommendation to me on how we should proceed as we need to have appropriate measures in place to move forward.
Barbara
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