And there’s no end in sight.
Already squeezed by curtailed hours and reduced staff, Houston Public Library officials today will pull the budget belt a notch tighter, telling City Hall how they plan to cope with an expected budget cut of almost $10 million for the fiscal year starting July 1.
Library Director Rhea Lawson told staffers this week that the budget reduction will mean “reduced staffing” and closure of some of the system’s 42 libraries.
Workers affected by the cuts will be informed by May 1. The library system employs 509 full-time workers.
“All of us … will be impacted in some way not only because our organization will be reconfigured and we will be operating with fewer people and fewer locations, but also because the entire process is so very painful,” Lawson said in a midweek memorandum to employees.
The Lege has also eliminated most of its small appropriations for libraries, and Harris County has cut back on library spending as well. It’s just very bad times all around. I’m not optimistic about it changing in the next couple of years.
My last trip to the library was a trip to elementary and middle school day care. With the closure of libraries there will be less day care for those parents that drop their kids off at library on their way to work and pick them up on the their way home. I do not condone the practice of government run libraries being day cares because these children are often unruly and this is woefully an unsafe practice, but there will be fewer free locations for such day care solutions.
Dropping an elementary-aged child at a library and leaving him/her all day isn’t a day care solution – it’s criminal negligence.
That said, Harris County is being squeezed all over. With major recent layoffs at even the Harris County Attorney’s office, it’s hard to imagine that the libraries wouldn’t get hit. As a heavy library user myself, I’m saddened by the budget cuts for libraries. Hopefully we’ll see an increase in real estate values (and thus local taxes) in the next few years and put the bulk of the budget crunch behind us.
Anyway we can reduce some of the state legislators instead?