(The following was provided article and information was provided by Derek Wolfgram, Director of Library Services, Redwood City Public Library)
The Library is seeking community feedback on the service hours of the Redwood Shores Branch Library. Please take the survey linked at the end of this article to help inform our decision making on this challenging issue.
The City of Redwood City has begun implementation of its Financial Sustainability Plan, which seeks to increase revenues and reduce expenditures in order to address an anticipated structural imbalance of $12 million in the City budget by fiscal year 2022-23. The first phase of the financial sustainability plan includes reductions of $3.7 million in fiscal year 2018-19, and an additional $2.3 million in fiscal year 2019-20. These reductions impact all City departments, including public safety, parks, and libraries.
If the half-cent sales tax measure on the November ballot passes, many of the proposed cuts for fiscal year 2018-19 will be restored (including library service hours), as increased revenues will help offset the need to reduce critical services. However, if the measure fails, library service hours will be reduced effective January 2019, and additional cost reductions will occur in the future.
In the 2018-19 City budget, the Library budget is reduced by $428K, with additional cuts of approximately $200K planned for 2019-20. The Library cuts include $97K from the materials budget for new books and online resources, $41K in supplies and services, and $290K in personnel reductions, which translate directly to Library service hours since the Library’s staffing levels for both front line workers and management are already quite lean. Fortunately, the Library has been able to manage these personnel reductions through attrition, so no library layoffs are planned for 2018-19. Most of the Library’s budget is for Library staff, and reductions of this magnitude cannot be made without affecting employees.
The Library had to make hard choices about Library service hours. In order to maintain minimum staffing levels with reduced staffing, the proposed cuts would result in a 23% reduction in overall weekly service hours at the Library’s four locations, from 208 hours per week to 161. This includes a 23% reduction in Redwood Shores hours, from 52 hours per week to 40. The proposed reductions are shown in the chart. Hours indicated in blue are current hours that would remain open, while hours shown in orange would be eliminated January 1, 2019 if the sales tax measure fails.
If the Library does need to reduce hours, we want to minimize the impact on the community. In designing the proposed hours, we looked at several factors: studying actual hourly usage data so we could keep the library open during the busiest hours; evaluating the need to balance different uses by different portions of the community (such as story times and family programs during morning hours, or community meetings during evening hours); maintaining consistent, easily remembered schedules; focusing on “single shift” days to most efficiently deploy limited staff; and integrating staffing coverage from other libraries.
Hours reductions can take various forms: they can be focused on weekends or weekdays, they can reduce mornings and/or evenings, or they can take the form of shorter days vs. eliminating entire days. Because we have received diverse feedback on the proposed reductions, we have created a very brief survey to help inform any reductions in library hours in January and beyond. Please give us your input by completing the online survey at http://ask.redwoodcity.org/TakeSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=ShoresHours# and feel free to let me know if you have any additional comments via email at . Thanks for your participation!
Redwood Shores Branch Library Hours Survey
http://ask.redwoodcity.org/TakeSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=ShoresHours#