Last week, this post generated a lot of feedback. Erik Bruvold and Vince Vasquez from the San Diego Institute for Policy Research had come up with some interesting stats about how much the county spends to keep its libraries open and how much the city spends.
Take a look at it to refresh your memory of what they said.
I got this response to it from reader Jeffrey Davis:
The San Diego City Library System serves a greater population than the county, as Bruvold himself notes in the comments. Now I'm no mathematician, but using a calculator and some more precise population data I found that the costs to the city per hour open, per person are $0.000415, and for the county they are $0.000424. In other words, the Library is inefficient and has misplaced its priorities. But it's the county, not the city! Bruvold and Vasquez have got the wrong Library!
Note: these figures use 2006 population estimates, but the comparison was true for 2000 data as well.
And here's Bruvold's response:
At the fundamental level, Mr. Davis mistakes our argument. We never tried to say who was the more "efficient". We asked a different and simpler question - what is the ratio of total operating income to hours of operation? We found that the City had a ratio of $544, the county $436.
When we then explored possible reasons for this difference we found that the city has 420 FTEs while the County had 290 FTEs. We opined that this problem could be exacerbated because the size of the new central library would seem to require more FTEs for each hour of operation.
To Mr. Davis's point directly - it is unclear to me what precisely a ratio of operating income/hours/population actually measures. There are several problems with this ratio, one of the biggest is that the marginal cost of serving each additional person in the population and the marginal cost of each hour of operation are likely at very different places on a marginal cost curve. If Mr. Davis wishes the short course in economics, have him contact me directly and we can walk through the analytic challenges of what he is trying to do and why I don't think he is measuring anything meaningful in his ratio.
I would close with the following observation. The debates about the City's library system when budget cuts (or more typical the inability to increase budgets as much as the bureaucrats propose) INEVITABLY lead to discussions about cutting operating hours. What this discussion has pointed out is that there could be a different debate - whether hours could be preserved if the system CHANGED the MIX of services that it offered? I, for one, would relish the opportunity to hear that discussed.
If Jeffrey Davis is the person I think he is (or at least was), a City of San Diego Librarian, and I wave "hello" to him. If I am mistaken, I apologize. I'm not a City or County or library employee...I'm just a resident who pays the bills and has lived in San Diego a long time. I don't see taken into account hours staff works when the library is not open. I don't know if it would change the expense balance between city and county but it's there. In truth the comparison seems facetious to me, at best. Once upon a time the City and County had a more reciprocal relationship than it does now and everyone benefited from it. This us versus you discussion is not productive. Working together for mutual benefit makes sense. Building a new main library without money doesn't. Territorialism doesn't.
OK, everybody, lets all line up to learn economics from Eric, starting with this quote of his: "There are several problems with this ratio, one of the biggest is that the marginal cost of serving each additional person in the population and the marginal cost of each hour of operation are likely at very different places on a marginal cost curve." Nobody writes this poorly, rather, this is obfuscation, plain and simple. The fact is that the city serves its people more efficiently than the county and no amount of obfuscation by Eric will hide this fact. Plus, the city provides important library services that the county does not -- all for less. And to take the point even further, the city of San Diego provides the county residents these important library services. Perhaps Eric may think we should charge county residents for using San-Diego-Public-Lib
And now to the issue of pushing the library debate so far to the right that it falls off the table. No, Eric, you may not hijack this debate and bring up the very existence of the central library or discuss cutting so many central library services that our main library operates like an over-sized branch library. It is unreasonable to shove the debate about building and operating the main library into the dirt. There will be a vote of the people if this debate is kicked into the ditch -- and the people will vote to support a new main library and put the debate back onto the table. Library killers are afraid of a public vote because the outcome is known to be widely in favor of building a new main library.
Chris, you miss the point with your personal attacks. Adding one extra hour (for example, increasing hours of system operation from 75000 to 75001) clearly has additional costs upon any system given that much of the staff is non-exempt employees. Adding one more person to the population (for example, going from 1,300,000 to 1,300,001) is likely to have extremely small impact on system costs. However, each of those increases would have an equal impact on the ratio that Mr. Davis constructed. Put another way, an increase in the county's population by less than 9,000 would tilt the Davis ratio the other way. That is why I don't think it is meaningful. I apologize for any confusion.
I think we're all missing an important point between the county/city stuff: Density. The county has rural libraries than will inherently be less efficient. This is true for any service provided in rural areas. Probably the most efficient library would be downtown because of the population density it could serve...but that doesn't mean it's the best way to provide such a service. What I want to know is, who uses libraries today? Is it a large group of the population, students, low-income people...who? I think that's important in determining what kind of system we need to have.
Well now the efficiency issue has been made more confused! Quoting Erik: "Adding one extra hour clearly has additional costs upon any system...Adding one more person to the population is likely to have extremely small impact on system costs. However, each of those increases would have an equal impact on the ratio that Mr. Davis constructed." That's Right! His ratio is people served to hours of operation -- plain and simple! And it is cheaper at the city than the county -- plain and simple. You mention putting it another way -- stop it! Just put it one way, plain and simple and stop the confusion. You want to promote the view the city is inefficient and these simple facts refute it, so you confuse the facts with, now, 3 different ways of "putting it," all of which are misleading.
I would love to dance on the head of a pin -- or, should I say, stomp on the pinheads who love to suck the life out of a Need-New-Central-Lib conversation? Efficiency, FTE's, relative City/County populations, marginal cost curves, non-exempt employees? What are you people talking about? And then, those simple questions from simple Bob: "Who uses libraries today? Students, low income people, who?" Do you ever leave your suburb, Bob, or the Ranch, to come into the big city? People are there in wondrous variety-- inhabitants, visitors, children, students, old people, young people, rich people and yes, even "low-income people." They would all enjoy having a new Central Library with a reading room, exhibition space, research capacity , an auditorium for public gatherings and events. Much better civic value than more condos, mai-tai emporiums, steak houses and tattoo parlors.
It would be an egregious mistake to discount the importance of numbers when talking about San Diego's public libraries. Those numbers are resident's tax dollars - and how local government officials spend them is a top priority issue for San Diegans, as revealed through SDI polling. Public libraries could never lose a congeniality contest in America, but wasteful, mismanaging city administators sure could. If we as San Diegans are to emerge out of our fiscal crisis unscathed, we should demand new innovative policy reforms that will help keep our the library doors open. Fawning over grandiose public works obscures the need to implement fiscally-sound ways to deliver public services.
A big new Main Library will do no good if there isn't sufficient staff to run it and not enough materials on the shelves. Asking about money is not a negative....it is the gasoline that runs this particular machine. An economic reality. And I am tired of the rah-rah main library proponents talking a good game but not showing us they've put their money where their mouths are. Don't put your hand in my pocket if you're not willing to take money out of yours. A big empty building might be a great homeless shelter, and that's all you'll have if a realistic financing plan isn't put together. More than expensive decor, you need staff, you need equipment, you need operation and maintenance. Where is this waterfall of money coming from...and have we ever had an accurate estimate of what the cost is over time?
Lost in this debate is the role of technological advancement. Yes, our city's population has grown since the "Old" Central Library opened, but so too has our online population, which is ranked as one of the highest in the nation. The World Wide Web has supplanted many of the traditional uses of public libraries - most notably, information research. Furthermore, state and federal authorities spend more than one billion dollars each year to offset costs that connect California schools and low-income households to the Internet. Minorities and poorer Americans have some of the greatest rate increases of broadband adoption. We'll always need libraries - but the future uses and costs of them should be scrutinized in the digital era. The Internet is one of the reasons why the 2005-06 City Library Attendance SHRUNK by more than 900,000 visits compared to 2001-02 - even though the population has increased.
Let’s all just be thankful at least SDI chose to bash the libraries instead of the mayor. I guess as a whole, SDI has proclaimed a jihad on the Sanders administration/city government.
The central library issue isn’t about rich versus poor. I'm not discounting the need for libraries...what I'm saying is, rather then start from the premise that a central library is the best use of library funding let's look at what are the use patterns for patrons. Frankly, I'd imagine that having smaller libraries closer to the homes of those that use it might be a better option than building a Taj Mahal type central library. I'd also be interested to see WHEN people use libraries and if existing branches could be better utilized.
Bruvold asks skeptically what this ratio actually measures. That's simple: the cost per resident for an hour of library service to the community. No hocus pocus, no angels on pins. // Now, should there be some marginal gain in cost efficiency serving 1.3 million vs. 1 million? Maybe, but I doubt it. For one thing, this is fundamentally a service industry. Which comes around to what Buvold insists they are asking: why is "the ratio of total operating income to hours of operation" higher for the City? Because the library is a service, and the City serves more people. The library provides storytimes, circulation, shelving, delivery, reference, programs, and security, to name only a few. And, for what it's worth, it costs a City resident less than a County resident to receive these. // Bruvold and Vasquez are right that some library forms, like a Central library, are more [cont.]
[cont.] labor intensive per hour open than others. Per hour open, Petco Park is very expensive to operate. With 40,000 fans, it doesn't look so bad. That doesn't settle the debate about a central library, but is a reminder that population served is a relevant part of the discussion. // Bruvold notes above how very little separates the City and County on a cost/hour/person basis. Absolutely true. But I think he also set out to paint a very different picture in his original comparison, which didn't hold up well to close examination. It would be disingenuous to claim that the original comparison wasn't intended to imply poor choices on the City's part regarding the "mix of services". It's perfectly legitimate to interrogate that "mix of services" -- but as the data imply, the mix at the City likely differs very little from the County's, which should come as no surprise.
I think Jeffrey Davis was much more informative and knowledgeable overall in this mini debate. He laid it out for us all to follow and I thank him. It's clear, Bruvold got taken to the cleaners and had to eat his lunch there. I think the simple breakdown in this debate that Bruvold lost the debate and then tried to change the argument to poorly apply his theories. Erik please attempt to give a better effort next time to convince the people SDI is something worth following. And Erik, what . . . no family recipes this time?
I am simply skeptical that it requires the same increase in investment to operate a library system when a city's population increases from 400,000 to 800,000 as it does when it increases from 800,000 to 1.2 million. There should be some economies of scale - if even just in the cost of upper management. And let me be specific for WWW regarding the mix of services. I would consider this (http://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/pdf/pathgiverny.pdf) to be quite specialized. I found this (http://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/services/hottopic0.shtml) to be almost laughably biased. As far as I can tell the County DOES NOT provide similar sorts of resources. It could be, but the budget provides no way of knowing, that these services are paid for by external grants and thus do not impact the general fund revenues of the library. (continued)
Thank you, Jeffrey Davis. Your analysis is right on target. I think what Erik and Scott are trying to say is, "We don't have much money, so we can't give a lot of library services to a lot of people, and we shouldn't build a new main library." It's a reasonable opinion, but some might say we could easily afford a new library if city government were forced to operate in a transparent manner, forcing officials to forego the backroom deals that cost the city so much in attorney fees.
(continued) But unless that is the case, it seems reasonable to ask whether, if redeployed from "research services", how many hours of branch operations could have been provided in lieu of these and other bibliographies, films series, and art expeditions at the current Central Library and whether those costs will GROW if the new library is built? If you go back to our original post, that was the question which we posed, because, as we found, the county and the city operate their SYSTEMS for the same number of hours.
I think Erik has a point. The mayor says that despite building new, larger and larger structures, despite a growing population and increased demands on the system, that the service provided will cost no more. Self check machines are going to save that much money? I don't see how anyone could be telling the truth if they say they can provide all these services and have it cost nothing (and include in that pointless exercises in expenditures such as the expansion of Rancho Bernardo and Kensington libraries which the councilmembers are pushing on behalf of their more privileged community members). It makes no sense no matter how you play the numbers game. Transparency in government is a joke with this mayor...as far as I can tell he is playing the shell game.
It is intolerable for Erik to suggest that "it seems reasonable to ask whether, if redeployed from "research services", how many hours of branch operations could have been provided..." No it is not reasonable, in fact, here we have a teachable moment of what's unreasonable. While we are reasonably discussing the issues surrounding the library, now coming in hard from the right is an unreasonable attack on the very existence of the main library. Sure, some wackos will say it's all on the internet, but the fact is the internet will not replace the services and community building the Main Library is all about. And to pit the Main against the branch libraries is willful negligence and creates a wedge issue -- it is not an either/ or issue and it is unreasonable to push the debate into a fight between main and branch libraries.
I think it's safe to say that we can close the book on Bruvold & Vasquez' original comparison. I'd like to make a very small contribution to the central library debate. We can be more specific about what a central library is. It is *the* public research facility for the region. Branches are not and cannot be. It also plays some other roles, though these can be 'decentralized' in various ways: it's the local branch for residents of downtown and Golden Hill; it's a cultural facility, like the opera, but popular; and it supports the work and collections of the branches. I'm not suggesting that a conclusion can be drawn from this about what to do -- it can't. It just helps to be clear where we start: it is the public research facility for SD County (and fulfills some other roles if we choose).
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Scott Lewis on Politics
The Scott Lewis on Politics blog, abbreviated cleverly as SLOP, is a collection of observations, insights and the occasional scoop on public affairs in San Diego. Please feel free to e-mail Scott at scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org.
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