Dear Editor,
Re: “Library hours cut back,” News Dec. 16.
The 2016 budget process is now completed for the Richmond Public Library. Council has approved the budget submitted by the Library Board and supported the library with a 2.38 per cent increase over last year.
The library is committed to maximizing this budget to continue to deliver a diverse range of programs and services to the community in 2016.
Unfortunately, due to rising expenditures and falling revenues, the budget required the library board to make some difficult choices as to where to allocate our budget dollars.
The Richmond Public Library is proud to offer excellent service and wishes to continue to do so. Two key areas that are important to ensure good public service are hours of operation and an up-to-date and diverse collection.
Over the years, our hours of operation have been among the best in Canada, but unfortunately our collections have not been maintaining their strength as the need for dividing the collection budget between print and digital grows.
The library board has made the difficult decision to re-allocate our budget dollars to ensure that the collections receive the necessary ongoing support.
In order to accomplish this we will be reducing our hours of operation at Cambie, Ironwood and Steveston branches.
Even after having done this, however, Richmond will continue to be one of the very few libraries in the region that maintains seven days a week operations for all its branches and is open full days on Sundays.
The library board believes that this combination of service adjustments will enable the library to provide the best possible library service for Richmond within our budget constraints.
Simon Tang
Chair, Richmond Public Library
