This morning, the Seattle Public Library (SPL) announced 180 days of library closures from April 12 to June 2, adding up to nearly 1,500 hours of cuts to a critical public service. All branches will be closed one day per week, with a few exceptions. Madrona-Sally Goldmark, Montlake, and Wallingford will be closed twice a week. The Capitol Hill branch will be closed Sundays and open two hours late Thursdays. The Central Library Downtown and the Ballard, Deldrige, Greenwood, University branches will remain open as usual.
The announcement comes days after SPL closed seven libraries, about a quarter of the system, in one day due to staffing shortages exacerbated by a hiring freeze on all departments except for “essential” positions such as police officers, firefighters, and social workers in the new dual dispatch program. Mayor Bruce Harrell instituted the freeze to prevent deepening the City’s quarter-billion-dollar budget deficit.
With the green light from the Mayor’s office, SPL will use these next eight weeks to hire 12 more mostly temporary staff members and then reassess the service cuts. SPL spokesperson Laura Gentry said she could not guarantee the libraries will return to normal service if they hire 12 staffers by June 2.
Gentry emphasized SPL’s respect for its partnership with the Mayor’s office in this decision to cut service. The Mayor funds 60% of the library’s budget, so it’s important to maintain a good relationship, but some library workers wish the higher-ups would take a more adversarial position.
“[SPL] doesn’t want to burn bridges with the Mayor, but the Mayor is burning bridges with us when he closes our libraries instead of funding them,” said a library worker at a small branch who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
Workers who spoke to The Stranger worried that these cuts serve as a “dress rehearsal” for an austerity budget from the Mayor’s office later this year.
1,500 Hours of Public Good Gone
The City is denying Seattleites 1,500 hours of learning, checking out books, applying for jobs, talking with neighbors, sheltering from bad weather, and, though librarians should not be de facto social workers, perhaps overdose prevention, workers said.
“The Mayor recognizes the critical importance of library access and the role libraries play supporting Seattle communities,” Mayoral spokesperson Jamie Housen said in a text. “We are working closely with SPL to address staffing challenges and create schedule stability for patrons and workers.”
Gentry told The Stranger that SPL tried to be strategic in its closures by staggering them, spreading them geographically, trying to protect important programming, and maintaining service at high-volume libraries. The libraries will still manage to operate above pre-pandemic levels, Gentry said.
Gentry said SPL has dealt with staffing issues for a long time, far predating the hiring freeze. Typically, the department operates at a 4% vacancy rate, which amounts to about 25 to 30 positions out of an authorized 705. As of April 10, the SPL carries 67 vacant positions for a rate of 9.6%, more than double the normal amount.
As a non-executive department with its own hiring authority, SPL technically does not have to abide by the Mayor’s hiring freeze, but Chief Librarian Tom Fay instituted a freeze to keep in step with the Mayor, Gentry said.
SPL and Harrell agreed on 12 exemptions to the non-executive department’s self-imposed hiring freeze. Those exemptions would bring SPL to a vacancy rate of 7.8%, leaving 55 positions still open. Gentry said the department will hire two regional managers who will likely join SPL permanently and 10 other librarian positions that will likely be temporary.
Gentry said SPL does not want to hire too many people permanently because they do not know how their budget will change when Harrell unveils his draft budget later this year in the face of a large revenue shortfall. She could not comment on SPL’s budget requests for 2025-2026.
Library in Limbo
Gentry also could not speak to what the City should do to pay for the library to stay fully operational, at least to the standards approved in the 2019 library levy, which pays for 30% of SPL’s budget. More than 70% of voters approved the levy with the top-billed intention to keep all libraries open Sunday at noon. For the next eight weeks, Beacon Hill, Broadview, Capitol Hill, High Point, Lake City, Magnolia, and Rainier Beach branches will be closed at that time.
Gentry suggested that concerned patrons could donate to the Seattle Public Library Foundation to support local libraries, but some library workers told The Stranger that calls for charity don’t cut it.
“This is super disappointing, and it’s important to remember that this is a choice,” said a library worker from the Central Library. “Service cuts are not some naturally occurring phenomenon.”
The library worker suggested the city council revisit the seemingly abandoned report from the Progressive Revenue Stabilization Workgroup to find ways to fund struggling programs. The council has been very shy to call for new taxes on big business or the wealthy—probably because that’s who got them elected.
But they sure did make a point in a March meeting of the Libraries, Education and Neighborhoods committee to talk about how much they love libraries. The committee members shared anecdotes about their childhood memories at libraries, including Chair Maritza Rivera, who said the library was the only place her mom would let her go alone in the “inner city.” Rivera, self-proclaimed library-lover, did not respond to my request for comment about the closures.
Another library worker told The Stranger that people will be pissed that the libraries are closing —“Everybody loves the library! What the hell are you doing?”— but she said their anger should not stop there. The Mayor has shown he doesn’t care about hugely popular, critical public services, so prepare to fight for every single City program you care about come budget season.
Quick!
Someone write up a new property tax levy!
The question of course is what to cut instead? They need to find $250 million in reductions somewhere. And this seems pretty reasonable.
And if your answer is the usual “cut the police budget” you really are just asking for even less tax revenue next year as more people and business that can will flee and property values reduce. We already have the lowest per capita police force in the country for a city our size (about 1/4 the size of DC for example). And the dream of reduced policing has resulted in a nightmare downtown already.
Very boring that some folks come on stranger’s articles just to tell people that we shouldn’t cut the police budget. I bet you the library has struggled with hiring because library workers are underpaid while entry-level police officers are getting $100K. I surely don’t mind people & businesses ‘fleeing’ because they’re sad there’s less pigs on the street.
What happened to the money that was (presumably) saved by closing every branch in the system for more than a year? That should have left enough of a surplus to cover a decade or two of modest shortfalls like this one.
@2, nobody is fleeing, values are going up and I’m starting to think you never go downtown. Yeah, Third Avenue is the same train wreck it has always been. Seattle will chug along because there are still many opportunities to make money here. And police officers should make competitive wages just like everyone else.
That said, there’s going to be pain all around next year. Saving some program hours at the Library will be cut hours somewhere else in the City budget.
@3 “I bet you the library has struggled with hiring because library workers are underpaid while entry-level police officers are getting $100K.”
It seems like this is just a wild guess. There’s nothing in this article to suggest SPL has difficulty recruiting for funded positions. Indeed, the article notes SPL plans to hire 12 new temporary employees over the next 8 weeks, and there’s no indication that goal is not achievable.
First, some history: then-Mayor Paul Schell, a successful real estate developer, did an end-run around the City Council of his day, by putting the “Libraries for All” levy onto the city ballot. The Council took this as a snub, and although the rebuild of the entire city library system was accomplished on-time and without cost overruns, the Council has never acted like they own the Library. They have repeatedly failed to fund operations sufficiently to meet demand, and a careful reader of this very headline post will see the Council funds no more than ten percent of the Library’s budget. (“The Mayor funds 60% of the library’s budget … the 2019 library levy, which pays for 30% of SPL’s budget.”) The Council’s chronic and shameful neglect of the Library forms a large, if hidden, part of this story.
Second, I am always impressed at how carefully the Stranger’s writers hold fast to ideology. This post contains another example of the Stranger’s maintaining the fictional belief that homeless persons in Seattle are “victims of capitalism,” who just need some temporary help with the rent to become stably housed. The Stranger thus carefully walks around having to admit drug use plays a huge role in causing homelessness, keeping persons homeless, or both:
“…though librarians should not be de facto social workers, perhaps overdose prevention, workers said.”
The Stranger pretending the identity of these overdose victims remains a huge mystery, one so strange they cannot even begin to describe who these persons are, really brings home how victims of the Stranger’s failed policies just have to be “disappeared” to make the Stranger’s ideology appear valid.
@5. I live downtown. And have for a long time. Don’t dismiss what an utter shitshow it has become. It is an unfortunate failed experiment in anarchy over the last three years.
And Why do we have a budget deficit now?
This is literally 100% preventable. TAX THE SOON TO BE TRILLIONAIRES WHO ARE ALREADY BILLIONAIRES IN SEATTLE. Employ a city tax on income. It’s truly obscene that Seattle is going to throw more money at cops and close libraries. If the Seattle Public Library system is destroyed because of greed and incompetence of the leaders and the wealthy who live there it should be considered a CRIME. Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY THAT TAXING OBSCENELY WEALTHY PEOPLE HOARDING WEALTH IS MORE OFFENSIVE THAN PROVIDING PUBLIC SERVICES THAT ENRICH THE LIVES OF EVERYONE. This country is so fucked up it is beyond all comprehension at this point.
We can forgive Hannah for being off her game this week. She had a pre-written puff piece qued up to celebrate last Fridays Palestine protest at UW. Alas, the reputational damage the protesters inflicted on themselves due their defacement of student art at the HUB made the event unsalvageable for propaganda.
So we get the sad violin over SPL budget woes…
@2: “We already have the lowest per capita police force in the country for a city our size “
No, we don’t. San Jose has fewer police per capita than we do and has generally had year by year for decades.
Meanwhile Boston has about twice the police per capita we have (and Seattle has never ever matched Boston’s police per capita ration) yet their police officers’ union president has been in the media decrying a terrible officer staffing crisis.
It’s a meaningless metric because what police actually spend their time doing matters.
@10 plus don’t forget the treats of violence against the media trying to cover said shit show:
https://www.dailyuw.com/news/statement-from-the-news-editor-regarding-thursday-s-protest-in-the-hub/article_2538cb6a-f545-11ee-88d7-3b41f5bbc769.html
“We believe the aim of the harassment and threats were to prevent us from being able to report unfolding events.”
“While covering the sit-in, I was subjected to harassment intended to humiliate me by weaponizing my race, ethnicity, and family history. I will never forget the experience of being told that I am a “disgusting person of color” and that my ancestors would be sickened by the person I am, among a slew of other dehumanizing statements.”
I know that this will irk some people, but I wonder how the library system finances would be if they had been a little more reality-based in their construction projects. The Central Library, while certainly striking, seems more like a product of an insecure city that is aching to be considered “world class” than a facility that is practical.
Also. Real estate values downtown are not in fact going up. If you’d like to purchase my condo for what it was worth in 2019, we can close that deal whenever you’d like.
Just annex into the King County Library System and be done with it. Problem solved. Undoubtedly there’s all kinds of administrative cost savings to be had by having one large library system rather than two.
I’d really like for persons who write and comment about local politics to recognize a classic maneuver by public bureaucracies when facing budget difficulties: immediately make disproportionally large cuts to the most popular programs first, to generate a public outcry against all reductions, whilst hoarding the remaining money for pet projects. That is clearly happening here:
“As a non-executive department with its own hiring authority, SPL technically does not have to abide by the Mayor’s hiring freeze, but Chief Librarian Tom Fay instituted a freeze to keep in step with the Mayor, Gentry said.”
So, although the Library doesn’t actually have to make any service cuts at all, it now implements huge — and hugely unpopular — service cuts, and in very high-profile ways:
“More than 70% of voters approved the levy with the top-billed intention to keep all libraries open Sunday at noon. For the next eight weeks, Beacon Hill, Broadview, Capitol Hill, High Point, Lake City, Magnolia, and Rainier Beach branches will be closed at that time.”
Blaming these completely unnecessary cuts entirely on the Mayor, of course.
@13: As I recounted @7, we voters enacted the Libraries for All levy in the late 1990s. The Library system’s physical plant was completely rebuilt, and by twenty years ago, all of those bills were fully paid. Ever since then, the City Council has done a sporadically inconsistent job of adequately funding the Library system’s operational budget. That’s not the fault of us voters in the 1990s. (If anything, a large capital expense on new plant will reduce operating costs for awhile after, as new plant does not require as much heavy maintenance as older plant does.)
Also, I’ve asked you this in the past, but I truly am curious. What do you not like about the Central Library? How does it not function properly as a library? I ask because it was my local branch, I used it for over a decade (starting on the very day it opened), and I always found it worked well for anything I needed to do there.
conservatives hate social services. film at 11
@16 dead on. I’d look for the parks dept to suffer cuts next especially with warmer weather approaching.
“Let’s give 30% raises to the cops and let’s invest in invasive tech like ShotSpotter and tv cameras….but let’s not fund the libraries.” – Seattle Democrats
That’s what you get with a conservative city council and an Obama for mayor. BTW, you should see my multiple rent increases under the new city council, slipped through on all sorts of new charges and fees. Of course I can’t just phone up my so-called representative because she’s not a representative – the police dept got her in – with the renters in my district either too dumb and uninformed to vote for the other person who you “would” be able to contact, or too dumb and uninformed to bother to vote, period. Meanwhile they want to subsidize housing for cops making over 100k, and grocery inflation, along with gas, is absurd. Just eat sh*t beotches. And your job market sucks too.
tensorna dear, I think the Central Library was a vanity project that is more flash than substance. I don’t think it’s laid out well and the ridiculous amount of glass used is needless maintenance and HVAC expense. But the architect was European with funky eyeglasses, so color us sold!!!
I guess my biggest gripe is that the City of Seattle has a century-long tendency to build things that are big and flashy (like the 1962 library that predated this one) and then fails to maintain them to the level they require. Then they go to the citizens, wring their hands, and ask for money because the facility is “worn out”
Papa Vel-DuRay was on the library board in our small town in Iowa for decades, and they struggled with the same issues with their one library (a Carnegie-built gem that is now a museum). When the casinos came to town and offered to pay for half the cost of a new library if the voters would approve a bond issue, the city built a handsome, functional library that is impressively engaged with the citizens. But no one is going to call it “world-class”
The rest of the Seattle system is pretty normal and functional, and I’m glad they preserved so many of the historical branches. The Beacon Hill branch is a huge improvement over what was there before (not that that’s saying much)
@21: I never looked at the energy budget for the current Central Library building (as I recall, it has a Silver LEAD certificate), but the old building it replaced was simply too small. Tripling (or whatever) the amount of space makes for a better use of the city block it occupies.
I guess we can agree to disagree on the layout, but as for glass, I liked all of the views (both of the city, and the surrounding area) which it afforded.
And my problem with Seattle is they don’t put enough capital up-front into projects, thus creating non-robust structures which require larger operating budgets to keep in-service. That’s one of the reasons I was happy to vote Yes on the Libraries for All levy: finally, a large capital budget for a large set of capital projects!
@16 – windows and HVAC. Cleaning the exterior glazing is substantially more expensive than it would be for traditional, vertical windows. The HVAC system is also European in origin and there is one service provider in Seattle who can fix it.
@20 If you’ve seriously had “multiple rent increases under the new city council” and “all sorts of new charges and fees,” you should contact the Renting in Seattle helpline: https://www.seattle.gov/rentinginseattle/housing-providers/managing-the-rental-relationship/housing-cost-increases
“The HVAC system is also European in origin and there is one service provider in Seattle who can fix it.”
That is so quintessentially Seattle, isn’t it, Hydronerd dear. 🙂 I’d love to see that contract…..
I hope the City Council investigates why the SPL will impose such a large number of intrusive, disruptive service cuts,when such cuts are not required.
SAVE THE LIBRARIES!
Also, what is it with the west coast and building temporary buildings? why aren’t things built to last indefinitely with maintenance like on the east coast, Europe, etc?
Good Lord, raindrop. It’s one thing to be hopelessly naive. It’s another to feel the need to prove it. Elimination of late fees caused the budget crisis? Do me a favor – if you get an email asking you to provide your banking information, delete it.
maevealleine dear, while I wasn’t around the last time we built a Central Library, the Seattlites of that era were told that the 1962 building would be expandable. That promise somehow disappeared over the years and suddenly it was a decrepit structure that was being held up by Deborah Jacobs willpower. While it was certainly decrepit, much of that had to do with the lack of maintenance over the years.
(while we’re on the topic of decrepit city buildings, the citizens of Seattle were bamboozled into purchasing the Seattle Municipal Tower – a white elephant that neither Key Bank nor AT&T could fill – because the City Light building was supposedly in danger of collapsing. The new owners, who got the building for the cost of a single family home – reclad the building in ugly aluminum and black glass and added two floors. The building stands to this day.
@23, @25: Purchasing what amounts to a bespoke HVAC system sounds like a procurement error to this engineer, not a design issue.
So much glass at non-vertical angles was a design choice, but in my book (ha!) that makes the Central Library easier to use. (Walls of glass should achieve a reduction in electricity use for lighting during Seattle’s long Summer days.)
Also, it was fun to see tourists taking photographs inside of the Library. That started on day one, and never really ended. How many cities have a full-use Library as a tourist attraction? Now, that’s a point of Seattle pride I was willing to pay for.