Here’s a bit of good/weird news for you: Those 11 libraries that were slated to be shut down are now staying open through June! What? As you may remember, Philebrity was all over this story, and for a while, the closer we got, the darker and more dire the situation looked: The Nutter Administration seemed utterly determined to close these libraries no matter what — even though it would have only saved the city like $8M that the Eagles owe us anyway — and Siobahn Reardon was all like, no no, we were gonna close them anyway and make the existing libraries super-extra-awesome. So what happened? A few things: First and foremost, a City court pretty decisively put the kaibosh on the closings. And before you start to the think that the Nutter Admin had some kind of moment of clarity wherein they thought, “Hell, when you’re $2 billion dollars in the hole, what’s another $8 mil if it keeps the libraries open,” think again: Closing the libraries also just got to be hella politically unwieldy, thanks in large part to all of you raising your voices so loudly. But nothing from this admin is going to come without an I-told-you-so, so let’s cue up the preemptive bellyaching, Doug Oliver:

“The financial reality is that we’ve been hit with a second billion dollar problem. And so it doesn’t make sense to try and address part of it when you still have to deal with the other part of it. Our position is: remain compliant (with the judge’s order), provide these services the best we can, albeit with reduced services, until we can address the entire problem in the context of the fiscal year 2010 budget.”

Aw man, can’t anybody just be stoked about this? And can’t anybody in City Hall just say “uncle” and move on? Because guess what: There is so much more where all of this came from.
KYW: File Under “Folding Them, Knowing When To”

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 1:03 pm.