DN Editorial: More cuts, fewer library visits bode ill for turning the city around

THE DIRECTOR of one of the programs that feeds the hungry across the street from the Free Library has generated controversy for refusing the city's directive to move the food and the hungry indoors. Too bad the feeders can't feed the library itself, which is starving.

Starting in 2008, when the recession hit the city, the Free Library has suffered budget cuts and a serious curtailing of hours at its branches. Its 2008 budget of $40 million is now just under $34 million, with $500,000 more in cuts scheduled for the next fiscal year.

According to the city's five- year plan, those cuts - including a 9 percent curtailment in hours - has led to 500,000 fewer visits to the library from 2008 to 2011.

Considering the varied role that libraries play in the lives of citizens - from job searches to computer access - that drop in the number of visits should be as disturbing as some of the other numbers that show how behind this city is in producing educated, literate citizens.

Our graduation rate is only 60 percent, college attainment is a dismal 21 percent, only half our schools have libraries, and more than half of city residents may not be literate enough to qualify for jobs. According to a new report from Pew Philadelphia Research Initiative, our per-capita library spending ranks 11th in the 14 big-city library systems that Pew studied.

It doesn't take much of a brain to see a connection here.

And it's hard to think how this situation will turn around - especially considering new state cuts on top of Mayor Nutter's plan to cut the library's budget again.

When Nutter announced plans to shutter branches during the initial budget crisis in 2008, the community blowback was strong enough to have City Hall shift its strategy to curtail hours throughout the library system. (According to the Pew study, similar library cuts met with equally effective protests in cities around the country.)

At that time, the city was moved to slash budgets to cope with the economic crisis, with little data to provide context for the library cuts. Since then, Penn's Fels Institute has released a study that puts an economic value on the services the library offers Philadelphians. It determined, for example, that the library's literacy programs provided $21 million in value, workforce development provided $6 million in value and business development $3.8 million. All of that is nearly equal to the library's annual $33 million budget, and that's not even counting the higher property values that homes close to a library enjoy.

Obviously, the city is not out of the fiscal woods yet, but if the mayor truly wants to be the "education mayor," he - and the rest of us - need to pay more attention to finding new ways to feed the libraries. After all, the more we feed our libraries, the fewer out-of-work hungry people we'll have to feed.