Despite Job Cuts, Dallas Will Maintain Hours at Branches
By Norman Oder Aug 10, 2010As part of a Dallas city budget balanced without tax rate increases, the Dallas Public Library will be among the agencies taking the biggest hits, with a loss of nearly half the general fund-supported staff at the Central Library and nearly a quarter of the staff in the branches. Nearly all those losing their jobs are in lower-skill positions.
All told, the library budget will decline to about $17.7 million from $23.2 million, though it was about $28 million two years ago. The only programming will be grant-funded, and the materials budget, cut from $1.7 million to $1.1 million in the past year, will be $1.2 million.
Branches keep hours, with "Macy's" model
Operating hours for the Central Library's first two floors would be cut four hours a week, from 44 to 40, while specialty floors 3 to 8 would lose 18 hours a week, from 44 to 26.
Surprisingly, the budget maintains hours at the 26 branches, with 194 FTE staffers for them.
"Operating the same hours with fewer staff requires us to create a new service model," interim director Corinne Hill told LJ. "With an eye to coming back and following a reduction in force, the professional staff is staying and is enhanced with para-professionals and customer service staff."
Of the 123 notices sent out (for 112.3 FTE positions), the library will lose mostly pages (76) and office assistants, Hill said, with a few positions she described as paraprofessionals and circulation clerks.
But those left will see their job duties blurred, she said. "The passive model of waiting for the customer to come to you will be replaced by working on the floor with the collections and a ‘can I help you?' and ‘let me know when you are ready to check out' concept," she said. "I call it the ‘Macy's Service Model.' If you aren't helping someone you are working with the product."
(One library supporter noted that volunteers would be recruited to shelve books.)
"The process and decisions for this new model are vetted with staff at all levels; and, consensus rules--not majority," she said. "Somehow, knowing that no one is really getting what they want helps us find a service level we can all live with. We still have a lot of work to do this summer, and those staying are looking ahead because we know that our decisions will impact how we come back."
The balance in Dallas
According to the proposed budget from City Manager Mary Suhm, who has a library degree, the guiding principles include public safety, core services, investment in infrastructure and economic development projects to grow the tax base, and "green" principles.
Libraries were not mentioned and the library staffers make up a good portion of the 437 city employees losing their jobs. Some library advocates, and Council Members, are not pleased. Michelle Manners, chairwoman of the Friends of the Dallas Public Library, told the Dallas Morning News, "You cannot let a treasure, something so essential to literacy and an educated population, be devastated like this."
The budget acknowledges that service will suffer; it predicts that the percentages of customers rating central library services as "good" or "excellent" would decline from 96 percent to 85 percent. In May, an even tougher plan was suggested, with cuts of 157 FTE and talk of a one-third budget cut.
"Funding will come back, it just may not be next fiscal year," Hill said. "That said, I saw in the paper today that there is still life left in the potential for council to raise property taxes next year. So, there is a glimmer of hope."
