EDITORIAL: Time for the majority of users to be freed from the parasitic Library System

According to the LNP article “3 libraries check out of fundraising plan” * :

“Eleven of the county’s 14 public libraries have given their blessing to the Library System of Lancaster County’s new fundraising pla.

“Not everyone agree: public libraries in Elizabethtown, Ephrata and Lancaster, which together account for more than half of the county’s library card holders, nixed the plan.”

And here lies the rub: In influencing Library System actions, the smallest library in the county has the same voting power as the largest. Through offering enticements to the smaller members, the System from its inceptions has been able to swell its bureaucracy and consume virtually all of the library funding from the County, leaving peanuts for the individual libraries.

Now a de facto take over will occur if the System is allowed to do its own fundraising. Chaos will follow, since the larger individual libraries, dependent on their fund raising campaigns, will have to compete with the System for the support of their long term contributors.

Even if the sum total raised were to remain the same, the cost of fund raising would likely double due to the redundancy.

Moreover, plans in the incubation stage for renovations and perhaps expansions will likely have to be shelved. Libraries will remain static and gradually deteriorate while the Service’s bureaucracy grows and consumes more and more. For example of the need for individual capital campaigns, the Duke Street downtown library hasn’t had a major renovation in over six decades!

This is just another symptom of the dysfunction of our Lancaster community: the inability of the popular voice to deflect establishment special interests.

In our opinion, there is one only one suitable course of action left for the three libraries representing the majority of card holders:

That is to break away from the System and regain control of their own destinies.

Why the County Commissioners continue to fund the System rather than channeling funds directly to the individual libraries is hard to understand. As Commissioner Craig Lehman has proposed, the System’s should sell services to the libraries that need them.

It then will become suppliers of the libraries and earn its keep that way. The System would have to either live on fees from member libraries or go out of business.

It would not be widely mourned.

*LNP continues to either fail to list its articles on main portion of the LancersterOnLine web site or do so tardily. (It can be read as part of the eEDITION.) If and when the article is separately posted, we will add a link.