Toronto library board member quits, calls TPL a "$165,000,000 annual burden"

Stephen Dulmage made a splash as a rookie member of Toronto's library board.

While other members focused on trying to minimize cuts in an austerity budget, Dulmage advocated "closing 38 branches, warehousing books, eliminating computers, and other budget measures that baffled board colleagues of all political stripes," the Star's Daniel Dale wrote last November.

Board members had been invited by the chief librarian to make money-saving suggestions as alternatives to Sunday closures and hours reductions. Dulmage is a chartered accountant and former chief financial officer of Dominion Securities who donated to mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi during the 2010 civic election campaign.

Dulmage has quit the library board with a flourish. In his May 2 resignation letter obtained by the Star, Dulmage wrote to library board chair Councillor Paul Ainslie:

Hi Paul

I resign as a Director.

After 6 months as a Director, I see that the Board has no will for needed change. TPL is a $165,000,000 annual burden for City Taxpayers which could easily be done for $100,000,000, stuck with a bricks and mortar model when people now go online to search for books. 2 consultant reports have told us we have too many branches and in fact there are 3 times as many branches south of St. Clair as compared to north of St. Clair!

The Branches have been turned into Community Centres offering programmes and services duplicating other Government Agencies ... Toronto already has 200 Community Centres !!

I could go on with a long list of other problems and misdirections ... but won't as you know of them.

steve

keep moving forward !!

Comments

[Jeff]

Hopefully he'll consider running for council. We need more people like this down at City Hall.

[RockyRacoon]

You can only buy books over the internet not get them for free to borrow and return. This internet as access to knowledge is like tv as educator it has the potential but it is not it is used to create revenues by any means possible usually pornography and the big owner's of the infrastructure know this they are the purveyor's or porn-not knowledge and education so this guy is full of crap about the internet. What you can get is very limited.

[Sara]

Good riddance. Anyone who considers a PUBLIC resource meant to serve the PUBLIC which includes those who DON'T HAVE COMPUTER ACCESS AT HOME to be a "burden" is NOT fit to sit on the board. People go online to search for books? That's a pretty broad assumption. Bricks and mortar model? What's wrong with libraries being community hubs? There's no more appropriate place! Too many branches? Too many for who? 3 times as many branches south of St. Clair? Of course you dufus! South of St. Clair is the older part of the city! Our public libraries are one of the best damn things about Toronto and clearly this guy doesn't get that.

[David Anderson]

Well, if I, as a 71 year old, were a member of the library board, my long-gone mother's words would ring in my ears: "good riddance to bad rubbish!" However, that doesn't address the inflammatory and angry - angry at generosity, angry at any human face that a library might have other than an "information/data dispenser" - remarks about Toronto having 200 community centres (already!?) as Stephen Dulmage says. A lot? That's one community centre for every 15,000 Torontonians. And in case he hasn't noticed libraries are used intensively in this city because they are great! And, internet searches DO NOT duplicate libraries. A city is a collection of people. If you want a good city, provide public spaces and places where people can gather, interact with each other, share their common experiences, etc.. What he proposes are fools' savings and the destruction of a resource that can serve Toronto citizens for decades to come.