This year, Dallas residents fought to keep neighborhood libraries open, and City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert’s proposed budget responds to this push. This time around, all library branches will survive as the library system shifts to a model built around five flagship locations.
This is a victory for residents who advocated for the libraries, but it may prove to be a short-lived one. As the city’s public safety and pension obligations mount, Dallas residents will have to reckon with the fact that the city will struggle to come up with the money to support all these branches down the line.
And keeping every library open doesn’t mean preserving the library system as residents know it. The proposed budget would eliminate 72 library positions, as well as convert some full-time positions to part-time positions. It would also reduce operating hours at neighborhood branches.
The five proposed flagship libraries — Vickery Park, Hampton-Illinois, Fretz Park, Pleasant Grove and Bachman Lake — would concentrate longer hours and programming, while neighborhood branches would operate on more limited schedules.
Residents should know that if they are set on having their neighborhood library remain open in some capacity, it may be open but a shell of its former self.
But the survey left out the hardest and most important budget question — what should Dallas cut instead? Most people support libraries, parks, police and street repairs when each is considered separately. The difficulty is when city officials must choose among them. Libraries are competing for money within that reality.
Dallas cannot maintain every facility at its previous service level while its obligations for paying police officers, firefighters and pensions grow faster than the money coming in. By passing Proposition U in 2024, voters bound the city of Dallas to spend at least half of any excess revenue on public safety.
The proposed flagship model is a good compromise, and the city should move forward with it. Dallas has rightly identified areas where it can cut back, for example, by eliminating adult learning programs that are also offered by community partners, while still keeping the things people love most about their neighborhood branches.
But as the city’s pension payments increase every year, residents will have to come to terms with a more concentrated library system. Keeping libraries with lower foot traffic will be unsustainable and unjustifiable.
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