Letter to the Editor

From a Library Worker

Since COVID-19 erupted in New Orleans in mid-March, library workers have been fighting for workplace and community safety. We’re very aware of our vital place in the community, and also the enormous potential to contribute to community spread of the virus. Because of our unique position as a public resource and a potential site of infection, we want to do our part to serve the enormous needs of the public as safely as possible. There is so much we can do while mitigating the risk to ourselves and those we serve. This crisis presents an opportunity to reinvent our library system (and our city) as a more tech-savvy and flexible organization that responds to the changing needs of the citizens of New Orleans — if our administration and city government give us the resources and trust to do so. So far, they have lacked the imagination to build a true “City of Yes” or to listen to those of us with the most experience and investment in New Orleans, especially city workers.

Now, Mayor Cantrell and CAO Montano, with the complicity of the City Council, are attempting to kill the library’s independent millage, rolling it into a larger city millage that will cut 40% of the library system’s budget while siphoning our designated tax funds into unspecified “economic development” projects. If this proposal to combine dedicated millages succeeds, they will dole out tax funds to the library, but only what they think we need, and only as long as we comply with their agenda for us and for the City.

Make no mistake – this cut isn’t because the library is overfunded, but because the library has access to dedicated tax funds that the City can’t easily access. These are funds that the citizens of New Orleans overwhelmingly voted to dedicate to the library in 1987 and 2015. The Mayor’s ballot proposal is demanding you say that your own judgement about where your money should go was wrong, that the Mayor and CAO know better how to spend your tax dollars. At meetings last month, City Council members ignored over 900 public comments, most saying “we want our money to go to the library, don’t do this” in order to approve this proposal. Many public comments invoked the global demands of the BLM movement and protests, reminding Councilmembers that the public has called for cuts to the New Orleans Police Department, not the library system. If the proposal passes the Bond Commission, it will be on the ballot December 5, 2020 and your only option will be to VOTE NO to the proposal to kill the library’s dedicated millage. After the public defeats the Mayor’s agenda, we will seek to encourage her to put a true millage renewal on the ballot in 2021.

There is so much we can do before December 5th – contact your Councilmember, the Mayor and CAO and tell them you do not support this proposal to kill the library’s independent millage. Promise everyone you contact that you won’t vote to re-elect them if they support this rampant misappropriation of both city funds and public trust. When you tell others about what they’re attempting, make sure to point out that this is about controlling tax funds the public designated to specific departments, because that’s the part they’re counting on the public not to recognize. They’re using the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic to talk about austerity and budget shortfalls, but this combined millage was proposed to the City Council in 2019, before COVID-19 had affected the City. Their agenda is to kill the dedicated budget of one of the only institutions in New Orleans that exists only to serve the people of New Orleans – each and every one.

They’re coming for the library’s budget now, but it won’t stop there. Please join us. You can email us nolacityworkers@gmail.com and follow our fight on Facebook at facebook.com/cityworkersnola