One of our readers Laurie Burras recently posted some questions on our site about Mayor Michael Nutter’s budget cuts. One of her questions includes “Can we make the money to keep our libraries open through bake sales, dinner shows, etc.?” To help answer this question, we contacted Sandy Horrocks. She’s Vice President for Communications and Development at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Here’s her response:          

While such offers to raise money to keep the branches open are most kind and generous, the problem is really too big. We need $8 million each and every year to keep these 11 branches open. That is the cost of the salaries of the 111 positions we are losing, plus about $1.6 million in materials (books, DVDs, newspapers and subscriptions). That is an enormous fundraising goal, which must be sustained for years to come. Given the major portion of the $8 million is salaries, we have to be very careful not to give false hope to employees or hire them one year only to find we cannot raise the funds the next year.

More realistic is the opportunity to bring library services into these and other communities, which are underserved by presenting our literacy and computer services without walls (or within other’s walls). The Free Library Foundation is working to raise funds to purchase bookmobiles, provide picture book collections to day care centers and other initiatives. We welcome contributions to buy books, to fund programs in the community and to provide free Internet access. In addition, our 43 remaining locations would be most grateful for anyone, who would like to join their Friends group, and raise funds for that specific branch. Such fundraising at the branch level has helped over the years in purchasing much needed book shelves, purchasing books or other materials, which are in high demand at a specific branch or even creating and maintaining reading gardens.

Overall, we’re hearing that the city will only consider private funding to keep the 11 branches open if money can be raised to last the next five years. Horrocks tells us each library costs about $545,000 to operate every year, and that $2.725 million would be needed over the five-year period. Click here to read more from the Free Library’s director and president, Siobhan Reardon, regarding the decision-process about which branches to close and how the system plans to go forward.

Another question that Laurie has asked is” What is the law regarding a Mayor’s rights to budget cuts versus citizens’ rights to services per taxation?” We turned to Uri Monson to field this question. Monson is the executive director of PICA, or the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority. Here’s his response:

I think the best answer is to differentiate between taxes and fees. Fees are designed to cover the cost of a certain government process (licensing fees to offset the processing of paperwork and oversight, alarm fees to offset the cost of police responding to alarms, etc.), and they are not supposed to be higher than the cost of providing the service.

On the tax side, there is no technical link between taxes and certain government activities, like at the Federal level where we all pay into a pot that funds everything from Defense, to Higher Education Grants, to Congressional salaries. At the City level, taxes collected go into a “General Fund,” which is then utilized to fund the various expenses of the City: police and fire costs, trash collection, operating health centers, etc.  The two main “checks” in our system of government are: the legislature – City Council, which approves the total amount the Mayor can spend (since the Mayor is reducing expenditures in the current crisis, Council does not need to approve the spending cuts), and ultimately the voters who have the opportunity every four years to determine whether or not they believe the Mayor is appropriately spending their tax dollars.

Let us know if you have any questions about our city, and we’ll do our best to find you answers. Email us at city@whyy.org