A clue to priorities

Bookmobile runs to be halted

And this budget cut in a city which just spent + $160 million on a new Rem Koolhaas-designed library.

Well I guess all those old retirees can just order their books from Amazon.

Comments

[Tommer Peterson]

Wait a minute. The funds for the new downtown library were generated as part of a capital bond issue passed by Seattle voters way back in 1998. The bookmobile cuts are part of the city's annual budget in the post 9/11 economy of 2005.

Ironic, yes. Connected, barely. Irresponsible, not really. Shortsighted...isn't that part of our city government tradition?

[David Sucher]

What Tommer says is true.
Sorta.

The "BUT" is that in order to get further in this analysis, you'd have to ask -- at least -- several other questions:

1. What was the Maintenance & Operations budget for the downtown branch _before_ the unKool-house? And then _after>?

2. Would a 'special levy' for Library operations been likely to pass if the City had been a bit more sensible and modest and urbane in its goals for the downtown branch? e.g. could we have remodeled the old building, and done a splendid job at it, for a whole lot less? This making it politically easier to have a special levy?

You get the drift. There is indeed a practical trade-off between "capital" budgets and "operatintg" budgets. If nothing else they exist in the same political world. So it sound good to be able to excuse cuts in operations by saying that capital budgets have no impact on them. But it is not true.