Tewksbury MA Library will not privatize
The May 28 Tewksbury Advocate reported that the Tewksbury Library will not be privatized, but still suffer cuts in its budget:
“Three months after the town’s Financial Planning Task Force entrusted the Tewksbury Public Library’s Board of Trustees to investigate the benefits of privatizing the town’s public library, the trustees concluded they cannot support a decision to privatize the library.
In a letter to the Chairman of the Board of Selectmen dated April 22, the trustees stated they lacked conclusive evidence that privatizing would bring any savings to the town. The only potential cost-saving methods the trustees said they could foresee were in employee costs outside the library’s appropriation. According to the trustees, one of their man reasons for not supporting privatization is the possible impact it would bring on their own autonomy and authority, along with any possible impact on library employees.”
“Currently, the Germantown, Md.-based LSSI manages 65 privatized libraries in Oregon, Texas, Tennessee and California. The large size of LSSI and its rank as one of the sole outsourcing companies raised some eyebrows among the library trustees, who said they feared this large monopoly put both the town and the trustees in a poor bargaining position.
“It is certainly not the best interests of the taxpayer to hire a company that holds a monopoly on any particular service,” the Trustees wrote in their letter.”
Info via LisNews:
http://www.lisnews.org/node/30232
Posted by Rich
