Last August this blog discussed the looming fiscal difficulties facing public libraries generally and Lancaster’s public library specifically. Over the past
month, the crisis has arrived, however it hit not in the City, but in Ephrata.
Facing a shortfall projected between $80,000 to $100,000,
the Ephrata Library – Lancaster County’s second busiest – was forced to make
deep, painful cuts: Sundays and Fridays closed, evening hours curtailed,
programs cancelled, and 11 employees – half the staff – laid off. Gone.
On the face of it, the shortfall was attributed to a bad
year of fundraising from private donors, who generate almost two-thirds of the
Library’s operating funds. (Perhaps
given a ‘kickstart’ by its crisis, Ephrata Library out-performed other
Lancaster County public library programs in the Thanksgiving week
‘Extraordinary Give’ fundraising drive, harvesting more than $29,000 contributed by
328 donors.)
We’ve become accustomed as a nation to having a certain type
of public service increasingly reliant on voluntary contributions rather than
government support through the appropriation of general revenues. This concept took off during the tax-cutting
1980’s, underpinned by the rhetorical premise that so-called “discretionary”
services should be able to demonstrate their worth to the public by surviving
in the competitive marketplace of charitable giving.
The poster-child that was said to validate the concept was
public broadcasting – PBS, National Public Radio, and their member stations – which
went from hand-wringing over lost government support to self-sustaining
fundraising juggernauts in a few short years.
(At this point in the article, there is an overwhelming temptation to
take a short break in order to meet this hour’s goal. Is there a matching grant somewhere out
there?)
But except for a few flagship institutions, public
libraries, parks and museums are really not in the same fundraising boat as
public TV or radio, given broadcasting technology’s incomparable reach and
messaging impact.
For our more localized community institutions, the current
over-dependence on private donors just is not going to cut it for the
long-term.
Must it be this way?
Apparently not, as evidenced by Dauphin County, where a dedicated countywidelibrary tax funds 65 percent of library operations, providing the county’s
libraries with funding stability, if not quite abundance.
Then there is the parlous condition of our fiscally
mismanaged Commonwealth. If a new
Administration in Harrisburg can find a way to overcome the forecast of
gridlock from a General Assembly controlled by the loyal opposition, perhaps
some reasonable participation and overdue funding relief is in sight for our
precious community public services.
As
Willy Loman’s wife Linda, warning of the awful price of abandonment, put it to
her sons in Death of a Salesman,
“Attention…attention finally must be paid.”
