Sunday, August 26, 2007

Miller saving money by closing library that's already closed

Since starting this blog, my letters to the editor have been few and far between, but I couldn't resist firing off this one that appeared in the Toronto Sun today:

Anybody home?

The city recently released a detailed list of service cuts, including the libraries that will close on Sundays. One of those listed is the Bloor/Gladstone library, which actually has been closed, since December, for a major renovation and addition. When I last passed by there, the foundation was being worked on.

I don't care what Sue-Ann Levy says about David Miller's Harvard degree. We are darn lucky to have a mayor who can figure out how to save money by closing libraries that are already closed.

Joan Tintor
Toronto

(Harvard rules)

2 comments:

Amanda Van Der Steen said...

I knew stuff like this would happen.
Miller leaping before he looks is going to make a mess of everything - this is just the start.

I'll bet the city will still have to pay all the full-time union workers at the libraries, community centres, golf courses, etc. that are having their hours of operations schedules changed.

All the workers will get paid but won't have to deal with tediousness of serving the public as the doors will be locked.

Lord Kitchener's Own said...

I think your post title makes this all seem a whole lot weirder than it really is.

The city released a list of all the public libraries that will no longer be open for business on Sundays, in order to save the city some money. Now, as it happens, one of the libraries on that list is actually closed entirely at the moment, for extensive renovations. Once the renovations at the Bloor/Gladstone library are finished however, and the library re-opens, its business hours will NOT include hours on Sunday, as they did before the renovations.

Now, I suppose the city could have produced TWO lists, one with all the libraries that AREN'T currently under renovation that will no longer be open on Sundays, and one that's just Bloor/Gladstone. However, I'm sure under that scenario that Joan would have sent in a letter to the editor complaining that if the mayor simply wanted to inform the citizenry of which libraries were cancelling Sunday service he should have just done that, and not wasted taxpayer money creating a list of all the libraries not currently under renovation that are cancelling Sunday service, and a totally separate list of all the libraries currently under renovation that are cancelling Sunday service.

So no, Miller is not "closing a library that's already closed". The city is ending Sunday service at a number of libraries in the city, and one of the libraries that will no longer be open on Sundays happens to be under renovation at the moment.

It's not rocket science (a subject by the way that you can no longer look up on Sundays at a lot of public libraries as the city tries to deal with their deficit).