Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Director To Step Down

The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (CLP) is going to lose a director but keep four branches for at least another year. Barbara Mistick, the library's director, told the Board of Trustees on December 13 that she would step down from her position when her contract expires on May 31.

"I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to lead Pittsburgh's legendary Carnegie Library system during the past five years," Mistick, the first woman to direct the system, said in a press release.

Mistick's future plans were still in flux.

"I'm a Pittsburgher, and I love Pittsburgh, and I love the library, and I am looking at other options that involve education in this city," she told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

At the same time, the 115-year-old system is facing an uncertain financial future, although the board has decided to repeal a 2009 action plan that would have closed four branches at the end of 2010, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

"More important than the announcement that [Mistick] will be leaving in May is the announcement that the board is formally scrapping the plan to close libraries in 2011," Chuck Staresinic, president of the Friends of the Lawrenceville Library, told the Tribune-Review.

At the same board meeting in which Mistick announced her impending departure, the board approved a 2011 operating budget of $23,956,000. CPL has lost nearly $2 million in state funding over the past two years, $407,000 in FY11.

Branch closings fended off
But the Allegheny Regional Asset District (RAD), the major source of revenue for the 19-branch system, increased its FY11 allocation by $528,000, to $18.1 million, helping CLP to cobble together a budget that avoided the branch closures.

The RAD distributes one-half of the one percent Allegheny County sales tax to parks, libraries, cultural and civic entities, and sports facilities. The bulk, 32 percent, goes to libraries.

The Carnegie Library, whose workers are not unionized, has a voluntary retirement program and unfilled vacancies that have allowed some savings, but the board appointed a Task Force on Library Sustainability earlier this year to explore ways to keep the library's long-term funding viable.

The task force recommended that the system improve its advocacy efforts, increase donor support and RAD allocations, launch an endowment campaign, and explore a ballot initiative to obtain some form of dedicated funding.

"Organizations like libraries live in a precarious existence from year to year," said Jacqui Fiske Lazo, the board's president. "Cutting back essential services and relying on volatile funding that does not keep pace with inflation is not a sustainable model," she said in a press release.

As Library Journal reported, an audit conducted earlier this year for RAD, which was sent to the task force, suggested that the Carnegie system's projection of a $4.4 million deficit by 2014 may be overstated.