[Peace-discuss] my letter to the Urbana City Council on the Council's support for the library

[Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss]

Last night I went to the Urbana City Council meeting and spoke to the
Council in the public participation period about my concerns about the City
Council's support for the Urbana Free Library. I delivered a MoveOn
petition, which folks are still welcome to sign; when you sign the
petition, it's delivered automatically to the Council and Mayor Prussing:

Urbana: Raise Library Levy Before Cutting Services
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/urbana-raise-library?source=c.em&r_by=1135580

There was some back-and-forth discussion between me, Mayor Prussing, and
members of the City Council. I sent the letter below to the Council today
as a follow-up to that discussion.

===

Dear Mayor Prussing and Urbana City Council members:



I wanted to follow-up on a point from our discussion last night.



Mayor Prussing correctly pointed out that the city has covered some library
costs in the past.



My understanding is that a key challenge that the library board is now
facing is uncertainty over whether the city will continue to cover some
library costs that it has covered in the past.



In particular, my understanding is that it has been the historical practice
that when the city negotiated raise increases with its employees, library
employees received the same increase as other city employees, and the city
covered the marginal cost of the increase to the library in the current
budget year, taking account of the fact that the library board could not
have budgeted for the increase in the current budget year. Then, in future
budget years, the library took full responsibility for the wage increase
for library employees.



My understanding is that some question has been raised over whether this
practice will continue for the wage increase that the city has just
negotiated with non-library employees.



Thus, the library board is currently faced with a very unpleasant choice.
Either it must deny the library employees the same wage increase as other
city employees are receiving, departing from past practice, or it must find
new resources right now to cover the current budget year cost of the wage
increase, again departing from past practice; to cover this cost, it will
have to cut somewhere else.



If the city council would clarify that it will continue in the current
budget year to cover the incremental cost to the library in the current
budget year of giving library employees the same raise as other city
employees, this would substantially address my concerns about the city’s
council’s support for the library.


If the city council is not willing to clarify that it will continue in the
current budget year to cover the incremental cost to the library in the
current budget year of giving library employees the same raise as other
city employees, then I think that raising the library levy to allow the
library to continue the practice of giving library employees the same raise
as other city employees without making cuts elsewhere should be on the
table for discussion.
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