The Kool-Aid's Fine!

The Calgary Herald reported today that the Calgary Public Library faces a repair tab of $53M.

For more than 20 years we have heard the epistle that the solution to government was to reduce it. "Starve the beast!" the neo-cons would harp.

Well as residents of Calgary we have a choice to make. Do we want a library? Does the use of the library's services help us achieve a quality of life we want?

If so, then it has to be paid for. Can a library be a private profit-making enterprise? Possibly so. We do have Blockbuster. Mind you for Blockbuster to sustain itself it has to focus on the best sellers, and that is not working particularly well as Blockbuster constantly crosses the line into unprofitability and possible permanent closure. The supply is then gone.

It seems that when security of supply is paramount, the profit-making enterprises are iffy choices as sole sources. Additionally, when there is economic competition among those sources, they may be driving down prices to consumers but they are also putting each other out of business, thereby further threatening the supply. Add to that the constant downward pressure on the prices earned by artists supplying to these operations and their ability to supply wanes as fewer and fewer artists can afford to write, perform and produce the knowledge material we rely on at the library.

It seems pretty clear that we need a publicly supported library as an enterprise of government. That means it's supported by taxes so each person's library materials budget adds to the overall budget and enables greater choice for each and all.

The 20 plus years of budget cutting has already limited the ability of public and academic libraries to stock their shelves with the breadth of material they and their users need.

Now the cash budget cutting has put the library into an unsustainable position. The books and other materials may well mould and rot. The air in the library could become toxic and unsafe for human use.

The "Starve the Beasters" may yet succeed. The cost of catching up on that foregone maintenance, the infrastructure deficit, may yet convince the decision-makers that the library must be closed as the impact of bringing it back to usable condition is too great. The "beast" will have been starved to death. Taxes will have been reduced permanently. Calgarians will be richer for having paid lower taxes.

I guess with nothing else to do, Calgarians could volunteer to clean up the tailings ponds, abandoned well sites, hydrocarbon polluted lands under former petroleum storage and refining facilities and gas stations and volunteer for other necessary and worthwhile causes.

On the other hand, maybe Calgarians would like to choose how we achieve our quality of life. If that includes having a usable and comprehensive library then we should beware of drinking the "Starve the Beast" cult's Kool-Aid.