PROVIDENCE – Providence Public Library has submitted a $5 million, one-year proposal for providing municipal library services to the City of Providence, library officials announced yesterday at the monthly meeting of the PPL board of the trustees.
The bid, submitted Wednesday, was drafted in response to an outline developed last month by the Municipal Library Services Working Group. The aim of the working group, appointed last year by Mayor David N. Cicilline, is to determine the scope and funding of the city’s neighborhood library services going forward.
The PPL is now operating the library system at a deficit, under a one-year extension that ends June 30, after six years of level funding by the city that the library said made the system unsustainable.
William Simmons, vice chair of the PPL board of directors and a PPL representative to the working group, yesterday acknowledged the efforts of his fellow members of the working group, especially facilitator Maria DeCarvalho.
“The Library is gratified that the City does not wish to abandon its current neighborhood branch system and we look forward to negotiating a service contract that achieves its current goals for city-wide services,” Simmons told the PPL meeting, “and we look forward to negotiating a service contract that achieves its current goals for city-wide services.”
Should the city decide to pursue a contract with the PPL, he added, the library will be represented in those talks by its lawyer, Dan Prentiss.
But the mayor was critical of the PPL, in a statement this morning responding to its library-services bid.
“The serious analysis and review underway by the Working Group to strengthen and preserve our library system is ongoing,” Cicilline said, “and the action taken by the Library Board only threatens to disrupt this critically important process.”
“Months ago, the City of Providence and the Providence Public Library Board agreed to conduct negotiations through the Library Partnership Working Group,” the mayor said. “It’s disappointing that the Library Board has purposely disregarded the process.”
Additional information on the nonprofit Providence Public Library and the city library system is available at www.provlib.org.
