The battle to rescue the historic Providence Public Library system from financial collapse, and perhaps to end years of controversy about its operation, may be nearing potential resolution.
A variety of sometimes-competing library supporters — a former banker, trustees, bookworms of every stripe, librarians in and outside the Providence system, academicians, and even an Episcopal priest — have been working to put the library on an steadier financial and emotional footing.
The focus currently is on an 11-member “Municipal Library Working Group.” Its members were appointed by Mayor David N. Cicilline last summer to draft a three- to five-year agreement between the city and the nonprofit corporation that owns and runs the library.
The Reverend Maria DeCarvalho, the dean for seven years of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John, and who now runs a consulting service to facilitate organizational communication, is the volunteer facilitator of the mayor’s committee.
She tells the Phoenix that the group, cognizant that the library needs financial certainty, wants to have a draft proposal soon. A temporary funding agreement, which is keeping the downtown Central Library and nine branches running, will expire at mid-year.
The group’s plan will address the city’s annual contribution to the library (now about $3.3 million of the more than $8 million budget); a reporting system between the library and the city; operation of the branches; and library “governance.”
On Monday, a Library Advocates Coalition, whose members aren’t part of the working group, issued its own list, calling for retention of all library branches, a 15 percent increase in city funding, and a 15 percent reduction in overhead. Its most dramatic proposal was the replacement of Dale Thompson, the library’s director, and her administrative team, plus the replacement of five trustees with five Providence residents and library users to be appointed by the city.
The administration has lost the “confidence and trust” of public officials, library patrons and much of its staff, the group says.
That echoes a theme sounded by Neil Steinberg, a former Bank of America executive now at Brown University, who studied the library last summer. He said “the deteriorating relationship between PPL leadership, the city and various community advocacy groups has been negatively impacted by the approach taken by the PPL leadership.”
Library spokeswoman Tonia Mason says she finds it “ironic” how the advocates’ group is criticizing an administration that has created a library system the group now wants to preserve. The sooner the working group plan is in place, the sooner the uncertainty plaguing the library can be resolved, she says.
DeCarvalho says the working group understands the urgency and has “enormous empathy for the trustees of the library, who have been working very hard, under extremely challenging circumstances.”
One issue resolved for now is a drive by 90 library employees to be represented by the United Service and Allied Workers of Rhode Island following a round of layoffs in 2004. The workers voted last month, 62 to 7, to ratify their first contract. It provides raises of three to three-point-five percent over three years, through mid-2009.
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