Sunday, September 26, 2010
Step 1 Hire company to run your libraries.....Step 3 Profit
I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. The NY Times is reporting on the hiring by the town of Santa Clarita of a private for-profit company to run their library system.
Now the company, Library Systems & Services, has been hired for the first time to run a system in a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy.Right now they fire the unionized librarians and allegedly hire them back at lower wages and screw them out of their pension, too. But if they want to save $1 Million and still make the CEO's salary and bonuses not to mention the profit target of their private equity masters, how soon before they hire nothing but TSA rejects? Or as one other city in CA did, rely on volunteers to provide the necessary service. But that is illegal for a for-profit company to do in CA and they wouldn't do that.
A $4 million deal to run the three libraries here is a chance for the company to demonstrate that a dose of private management can be good for communities, whatever their financial situation. But in an era when outsourcing is most often an act of budget desperation — with janitors, police forces and even entire city halls farmed out in one town or another — the contract in Santa Clarita has touched a deep nerve and begun a round of second-guessing.
Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort — and maybe not even then?
“There’s this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries,” said Frank A. Pezzanite, the outsourcing company’s chief executive. He has pledged to save $1 million a year in Santa Clarita, mainly by cutting overhead and replacing unionized employees. “Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization.”
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