New York, NY —
Once again, the city’s three library systems - The Brooklyn Public Library, the Queens Public Library, and the New York Public Library - have escaped the budget knife. WNYC’s Ilya Marritz watched the deal take shape. He reports there’s one potential money-saver the mayor and the City Council didn’t consider.
REPORTER: It’s like a play that’s been performed so many times, you know most of the lines before they’re out of the actors’ mouths.
MARKEY: The mayor comes out with a proposed budget
REPORTER: That’s Ray Markey, a former leader of the librarians’ union in Manhattan.
MARKEY: And he announces, just say there’s going to be 15 percent cuts.
REPORTER: Mayors from John Lindsay to Rudy Giuliani to Mike Bloomberg have always proposed cutting library funding when times got tough.
MARKEY: Knowing full well that in the budget process the City Council will restore X amount of money to the libraries.
REPORTER: This year, with the economy in tailspin, Mayor Bloomberg proposed drastic cuts, 21 percent. After that, everyone stuck to script: the libraries mounted publicity campaigns. City Council members fretted about their local branches. And this week, the Mayor and the Council reached an agreement avoiding major cuts. Everyone take a bow.
CLAPPING SOUNDS
REPORTER: But there is another way, another rock to turn in search of savings. This option is so radical, Ray Markey says he only heard it proposed once in his 40 years on the job: encourage New York’s three independent public library systems to merge into a single, unified system.
MARKEY: Just the salaries alone from the top management would save a million dollars easily. Easily.
REPORTER: That’s just the executive level. Think, Ray Markey says, of all the money that could be saved by combining other operations.
MARKEY: Instead of having three different institutions purchase books you would have one system purchase books, instead of having three different catalog systems you’d have one catalog system.
REPORTER: Markey, who negotiated a half dozen labor contracts before retiring to Hawaii, says a single library system would save money on heating oil, janitorial and security services, even the trucks that move books from library to library. All of these are now contracted separately, and have been since the libraries began as separate systems in the 19th century.
So is a merger worth considering? WNYC asked Queens Public Library CEO Tom Galante.
GALANTE: My reaction to that would be no. It’s a good question. I think that without understanding the cost structures of libraries that might be a natural instinct.
REPORTER: Galante says each of the city’s libraries is so big, they already get the advantages of scale – like discounts on book orders.
And the biggest expense – labor – is negotiated jointly by the three library systems. In effect they’ve already consolidated some functions. So why not go it all the way?
GALANTE: in the end you’d have people making decisions that are farther and farther away from the services you’re trying to deliver and I think a reasonable argument could be made is they’ll make decisions that aren’t going to be as cost effective or at least from a service delivery perspective would not be nearly as good as they can be when you’re closer to the action.
REPORTER: Some library users polled by WNYC agree with this view. Others think consolidation could save money, or should at least be studied. Many people said the greatest benefit wouldn’t be financial. Angel Palmer lives in Brooklyn but works in Manhattan.
PALMER: being able to take books out of any library and being able to take it back to any library. Not having to re-register my library card to use it in Manhattan, Bronx, Queens.
REPORTER: One city, one system. Ray Markey, the retired librarian, says only one person might be able to convince three different library boards to give up their separate fiefdoms. It’s a man who’s sat on quite a few charitable boards himself.
MARRITZ: Mr Mayor, I wanted to know whether you think it would make sense to encourage the libraries to merge possibly, could money be saved if we had one system instead of three?
BLOOMBERG: Well, I don’t know whether that would save anything, I don’t think, although I’ll certainly talk to Paul LeClerc and ask
REOPORTER: That’s Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library
BLOOMBERG: But I don’t think if you at the top level combined them it would make very much difference.
REPORTER: For this year, the libraries’ fiscal future looks secure. When WNYC recently asked Paul LeClerc whether a merger would be a good idea, he shook his head no.
For WNYC, I’m Ilya Marritz