Saskatoon city council rejects public library's request for 15 full-time staffers

Saskatoon city council debated the latest budget Liam Richards / The StarPhoenix

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The Saskatoon Public Library’s request for funding to hire for 15 new full-time staff next year has been denied.

During the first day of municipal budget debates, councillors voted 7-4 against the Saskatoon Public Library budget and asked director Carol Cooley to go back to the drawing board and come up with a leaner proposal.

Mayor Don Atchison said he can’t remember a library budget ever being sent back for reconsideration.

The Saskatoon Public Library had requested a $1.9 million budget bump in 2016 to bring its total operations to $21.1 million. A good chunk of the increase — $1.2 million — was earmarked for staff compensation, including to support 15 new full-time-equivalent positions.

It’s a big request for an organization that has added just 3.4 new full-time equivalent positions to its payroll in the last decade.

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This has resulted in the library being understaffed, said Cooley, who took over leadership of the library this summer.

“We’ve responded to growth and new demands by creating shortages in all areas of our organization, leaving us just with the ability to get by — or barely get by — on a day-to-day basis,” she said.

This year, the library had funding for 134.6 full-time equivalent positions.

Funding new jobs to boost that number to 149.6 would create savings by reducing casual staff hours, Cooley said. She did not know how much those savings would amount to.

Eight of the new positions requested in the library’s 2016 budget would have gone to the Stonebridge Library, which is scheduled to open next year. Without those positions, the branch can’t open, Cooley said, adding that the city should have funded eight new positions in 2009, when the 20th Street branch opened.

Even the councillors who voted against the library budget expressed interest in funding some new full-time positions for the organization.

“Fifteen (full-time equivalents) is a lot, but I am willing to support something that comes back,” said Coun. Tiffany Paulsen, who voted against the budget. “There’s a compromise position in here that I could support.”

Cooley will need to present a revised budget to council by March. She could be back as early as this week.

ahill@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/MsAndreaHill

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