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Judge Blocks Philadelphia Library from Making Additional CutsA Philadelphia judge issued an injunction blocking the city from reducing hours at an additional 10 Free Library branches or laying off any more library employees until July 1. However, Common Pleas Court Judge Matthew D. Carrafiello did not call for the restoration of hours at 10 branches whose hours already been reduced or the reinstatement of five employees who have already been laid off.Carrafiello called the cuts “more than an attempt to bridge a budgetary gap. They are efforts to change the basic fabric of one of our most beloved Philadelphia institutions,” the Philadelphia Daily News reported April 8. Although the city claimed the cuts would not pose irreparable harm to the city, the judge said the local library is one of the “strongest antidotes” to the drug culture and violence affecting Philadelphia’s children. Acting City Solicitor Romulo L. Diaz Jr. said the administration plans to appeal the judge’s decision. The injunction had been requested by Locals 2186 and 2187 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, who alleged that the city failed to negotiate with the unions before making the cuts. In January the library administration announced that it would designate 20 branches as express libraries that would be open only four hours a day and staffed by paraprofessionals. Officials said the plan would allow all 55 city libraries to offer Saturday hours and be open during peak-use times. At a four-hour hearing on the library’s budget April 6, city council members sought to find out what had happened to the $1 million they added to the library’s budget last year to restore Saturday hours. Library Director Elliot Shelkrot admitted that both he and members of the mayor’s budget office knew that the $1 million was really only “plugging a $1 million hole”—in the words of Councilman Michael Nutter—caused by a budgeting error. Nutter also criticized Shelkrot for agreeing to give some $270,000 of the $800,000 it collects in fines to the city’s general fund, noting that the move was made against the advice of the library’s own lawyer, the Daily News reported April 7. Council members also voiced their outrage that the library was planning a major renovation of its Central Library as it reduced services elsewhere in the system. When asked by Councilman Frank DiCicco what he would choose if forced to decide between either funding the Central Library expansion or keeping the branches open, Shelkrot replied that the expansion and building of a new central library was more important to the city’s future, eliciting boos from library advocates in the audience. Posted April 8, 2005. |
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