Elected officials and library patrons in Springfield, Massachusetts, are demanding that library trustees reverse the abrupt—and permanent—closure February 10 of three of the nine branches comprising the Springfield Library and Museums Association. SLMA Executive Director Joe Carvalho testified at a February 20 city council meeting that a $200,000 cut in state aid, as well as decreased revenue from other sources, forced trustees to lay off 42 library workers, shutter the three branches most in need of renovation (Liberty, East Springfield, and Forest Park), and begin planning the dispersal of collections and final disposition of the buildings. The board also reduced service at four other facilities to one day per week.
Although 70% of SLMA’s $6.9-million funding comes from the city, the private association is independent of municipal oversight. City activists have criticized the composition of the board, of which two-thirds live outside Springfield.
At the council meeting, Carvalho said repeatedly that he didn’t know “off the top of my head” how much it actually cost to run the branches or how many people had worked at the heavily used Forest Park site, according to the February 27 East Hampton Valley Advocate, an area weekly. “This is what happens when city officials do not undertake the tedious work of fiscal oversight,” activist Sheila McElwaine declared, despite Carvalho’s assertion that “There’s no desire on the part of the [SLMA] to hold back on anything.”
Addressing state-level library funding cuts of over $7.1 million in FY 2003, Massachusetts librarians lobbied state legislators February 12 to back a bill that would restore $3.3 million. But the February 26 release of Gov. Mitt Romney’s FY 2004 budget proposal offered more grim news: The plan includes a $232-million reduction in local aid and the proposed dismantling of the entire University of Massachusetts system.
Posted March 3, 2003.