The plan to charge an as-yet-unspecified nonresident fee comes a month after the legislature ended DPL’s 27-year grant-supported status as a state resource by reallocating several million dollars earmarked for it and Grand Rapids Public Libraries into a pool from which any Michigan public library can try to dip. State Sen. Thomas George (R-Kalamazoo), who spearheaded the status change for the two systems, told the Free Press “they certainly have the prerogative” to seek lost funding elsewhere. Besides losing special funding, the library also saw its 2001 state funding halved, to $3 million; Michigan legislators gave DPL only $1 million in support for 2003, according to the September 18 Detroit News.
Although DPL had charged nonresidents to access its special collections, John Dulong, who chairs an advocacy group for one such department—the Burton Historical Collection—insisted that 2002 audit findings proved that former DPL Director Maurice Wheeler helped create the funding crisis through mismanagement. The fees “will aggravate genealogists,” Dulong told the Free Press, adding, “Fewer people will attend” DPL overall.
Should the library commission approve the proposal, DPL will begin charging nonresident fees January 1, 2004.
Posted September 22, 2003.