Gravy at the library

Former Toronto mayor Rob Ford famously said his city’s spending was just a gravy train. His critics insisted no such thing existed. Ford may be gone, but his language lives on, at least among his opponents who keep trying to show us he was wrong. Just the other week, the Toronto Star complained in an editorial that municipal politicians were still convinced they had to “stop the gravy train…. But there is no gravy train.” The editorial was decrying a request from Mayor John Tory that city departments, including the Toronto Public Library, cut a paltry 2.6-per-cent from their budgets. City spending, the Star insisted, “has already been cut to the bone.”

Oh, please. Anyone who looks at the library’s budget will find more gravy there than at Swiss Chalet. Data published by the Ontario government shows that in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available, Toronto residents were paying more for the library — and getting less for their money — compared to other major cities in Ontario.

Toronto’s public library system cost 22-per-cent more to operate, and its staffing costs alone were 33-per-cent higher, than the public libraries in Brampton, Hamilton, London, Markham, Mississauga, and Ottawa combined. This suggests that, contrary to what the Toronto Public Library Workers Union would have us believe, Toronto’s Dufferin/St. Clair branch of the Toronto Public Library. library workers are not overworked and underpaid.

All this additional spending might be justified if Toronto’s library was significantly more efficient and productive than the library systems of those other six the Toronto Public Library did in 2013. Those numbers, again, are combined. But Toronto’s library, being the largest, should actually be enjoying some efficiencies. It is certainly odd that it should actually be less efficient than savings that the mayor is asking for. Perhaps others might have once considered it unthinkable that Toronto would someday have more library branches than New York City, Los Angeles, or Chicago. But it does.

Rather than the 100 branches it has now, a more appropriate number for a city of Toronto’s size might be 40 or 50. Indeed, closing branches is not a new idea: In 2011, a businessman who was on the Toronto Public Library’s board of directors suggested slashing 38 branches to save money. Those fighting to not close a single one, or even see them run shorter hours, are clearly on the side of gravy.

But when you really think about it, isn’t it also possible that the system itself might be unnecessary gravy? Is there any evidence that the same markets that keep us well served with winter boots, cars and groceries (including, of course, delicious gravy) couldn’t also provide us a solution for shared reading material if that’s what people wanted? It seems especially possible in the age of the digital sharing economy, where anybody with an Internet connection can access an endless supply of virtually costless words. If the public library, with its antiquated bricks-and-mortar citywide branches of unionized staffers did not already exist, it’s hard to believe anyone today would see any sense at all in inventing it.