Community struggle keeps libraries open

Months of community organizing to stop the closing of 11 branch libraries ended in a victory on Jan. 28 when Mayor Michael Nutter announced all libraries would remain open through June 30, the end of the city’s fiscal year.

Nutter first proposed shutting 11 of the city’s 54 branch libraries in early November to close a $1 billion budget gap in the city’s five-year plan. Nearly all the targeted libraries were in working-class or low-income African-American neighborhoods.

The burden of these closings on the targeted communities was compounded by the lack of libraries in public schools. The libraries also provide the only access to computers for unemployed adults searching for jobs and senior citizens using the Internet. Child care centers that rely on these branch libraries to introduce preschoolers to books played a major role in the movement to keep them open.

Aided by library advocates, community residents quickly sprang into action to oppose the closings. Until late December they held weekly demonstrations outside the branch libraries as well as citywide rallies. They filled City Council meetings and a series of “town hall” meetings Nutter held to try to sell his budget plan.

In December, Common Pleas Judge Idee Fox ruled in favor of seven library patrons and three Council members who sued Nutter, citing a 20-year-old ordinance requiring the Council’s approval to close city buildings. Nutter had not consulted City Council members before proposing the cuts.

The danger of broader cuts is not over. Even with the announcement that the libraries would remain open, there was uncertainty about how many days per week each library would stay open. Workers World also learned that the library administration has threatened layoffs at the central library and blamed this on the activists who kept the branch libraries open.

Nutter’s budget ax also targeted several city fire companies, which closed in January despite demonstrations by community residents and firefighters. Brian McBride, president of Local 22 of the International Association of Firefighters, warned that “people will die” because of these closures.

In the second round of cutbacks, Nutter is proposing ending weekly trash pickup, cutting services for the homeless, closing free health clinics and increasing some property taxes.

Opponents of cutbacks that target the city’s poorest residents have called for an elimination or modification of Philadelphia’s 10-year tax abatement program that began in 2000. Newly constructed residential, commercial and industrial properties pay few or no taxes under this program. Over 8,000 owners of expensive condominiums were granted abatements of up to $10,000 a year for 10 years.

The Board of Revision of Taxes, in a January report, listed 4,027 new residential properties in the city receiving abatements worth $22.9 million in property taxes for 10 years and 1,663 new commercial and industrial properties getting abatements worth $23.3 million in taxes for 10 years.