Calgary Budget 2019-2022

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by suburbia

How many dollars are we talking about in total?

I'm kinda split on this, as we shouldn't have barriers to the library, and the numbers we're able to serve are massive. Frankly speaking, cutting arts a pinch to ensure full free public access to libraries is acceptable in my view. Didn't the recent construction just come in under budget by like $10M?

Also, does someone have public library membership rates for across Canada?

[EDIT] quick search finds Edmonton is free, Waterloo is free, Vancouver is free, Toronto is free. Some charge if you are outside of the region, so Airdrie freeloaders, as an example. I guess we could nickle and dime our citizens on this one and be comfortable at being a second-rate city - but personally I'm not for that. I think it is sad that many who don't read are against free access, when it is free access that will get their kids out of illiteracy.

The Calgary Public Library in the past always claimed they had one of the highest circulation numbers for materials in North America so they must have had a fair number of paying members. Let's say they could get 200K paying members. That would provide them with $2.4 million in additional revenue which wouldn't hurt. I'd like to see the money be used to buy access to more online materials as that's the method in which more and more people are making use of what the library has to offer. Low income people would still get free access. The membership fee isn't a huge source of revenue but it's significant enough to be useful so why give it up?