Mr. Charles V. Ryan
55
Dear Charlie:
I am responding to your letter of April
10, 2003 requesting certain information for the City Council Library Study
Committee. SLMA is prepared to provide your committee with whatever information
it can reasonably assemble in order for you to reach a recommendation
concerning the future ownership of either the Springfield Library system and/or
the library branch system. We understand that the mission of your committee is
to study the library system and determine whether or not it would be
economically feasible for the City to purchase its assets and operate the
libraries as a city-owned system. Therefore, in order to assist you, we have
determined what we can provide on a relatively quick turnaround basis and what
other items may not be realistic for us to provide.
As you are aware, SLMA has also had to reduce its
staff due to budgetary constraints and therefore, the volume of material which
you have requested would take months to retrieve. We believe that some of your
requests are overly broad and are unnecessary to a determination as to whether
or not a city-owned library system is economically viable, You
acknowledge that you have the last three years' financial statements. We
believe that those statements should be sufficient for you to form a basis for
your opinion as to what it costs to run a library system. The details for the
preceding years will not shed any light on library operations for the future due
to the fact that labor costs, materials costs, and all other items are
drastically different today than they may have been five or ten years ago.
In responding to the specific item in your list of
documents, I am advising you that we shall provide, as rapidly as possible, the
following items with references in this letter being to the sequentially
numbered items in your request.
1. There was one report provided in
1996 which will be provided to you.
2. Although unnecessary, we will provide these documents.
3. The volume of work to
produce financial statements that you are
Mr. Charles V. Ryan
Page 2 of 3
4. We
will provide you with a breakout of capital expenditures and book purchases
for the last year.
5. The
information which you have requested can be obtained from the City much more
rapidly than we could produce same.
6. We will provide a copy of the Lease.
7. Please get this information directly from
the City.
8. We
will provide you with a list of capital expenditures for a one-year period
on all branches other than
9. This renovation was done in 1999 and we will provide the information
to you.
10. We will provide you with capital improvements to the Central library for the past twelve months
11. The
Mayor's recommended Budget should be obtained froni the City.
13. We
will provide you with one years' breakdown of grants received from the federal
government for the libraries.
14. We
will provide you with a copy of this
Agreement.
16. We
will provide this information,
17. We will provide you with a Table of Organization
for the Central library and all branches, except
18. We
will provide this for a one-year period since utility rates escalate each
year, then preceding years will give you no valuable information.
19. This information is readily
available, but we will provide it to you for all library employees for the
last fiscal year. Museum employees will not be included,
20. We will provide you with the number of
volunteers working in the libraries for the past year.
Mr. Charles V. Ryan
Page 3 of 3
21. We
will provide you with a list of income
received from the School Department for the last year.
22. 1
am advised that there are no contracts with the School
Committee, but we will provide you with the last year's revenues for the Brightwood
Branch.
23. I
assume that by "perpetual trusts", you mean endowments. We will
provide this information to you regarding libraries only. To the best of my
knowledge, the only two such endowments relate to the Mason Square Library
and the Forest Park Library.
25. We will provide this information
for one year.
26. We will provide you with a copy of the
report for the last year.
27. We will provide this information to you
for the last three years.
28-30. We
will not provide you with any of this information, because it is not germane
to your mission.
Although you may be disappointed with the level of
information which you are going to receive from us, I can assure you that it will be more than adequate
for you to come to a rational judgement
as to the future of the Springfield Library system.
Once you have had a chance to digest
this information, we would be pleased to meet with you to answer any questions
that you might have. Our intent is to work in a cooperative manner in order to
best serve the residents of
Please call me if you have any further questions. Kindest regards.
Sincerely,
Copies to: Donald
H. D'Amour, Chairman
J.
Michael Wallace, Vice Chairman