It’s time. Time for the Providence Public Library to do the right thing: give the people of Providence their libraries. The efforts of the PPL – a private library – to gain leverage, to get more public money, to squeeze the city – should end now. The neighborhood libraries, built with donations from Providence residents and funds from Providence taxpayers, should be given back to the city, to the people of Providence.
This isn’t a question of contracts or legal fine points. Those are being considered elsewhere. This is a question of what’s right. Unless and until the city has ownership of the buildings, they remain in jeopardy. Repairs are needed to keep the libraries in working order. (The new library, the Providence Community Library, has sought grant money, in order to do necessary repairs to the former PPL branches. As the buildings have not yet transferred to the city, those grants have been denied.)
I view this situation from a rather unique position. I serve as the governor’s representative on the board of the year-old Providence Community Library, the PCL. But before the PCL started up on July 1, I was the governor’s designee on the PPL Board of Trustees. While I sat on that board, PPL decided it no longer wanted to be in the “branch business.” Now, it’s being suggested that the PPL trustees really didn’t formally vote to give up the branches. But the truth is that the PPL board, and especially its leadership, repeatedly trumpeted that desire. And not quietly, but in public meetings.
I know this because, interestingly, I fought against the move. At the time, I preferred that the PPL remain as it was, as a full-branch system. But my voice, together with that of the mayor’s representative, was drowned out. Instead, the board offered on multiple occasions to simply give the branches to the city.
Giving the buildings to the city would have been entirely appropriate. After all, once the PPL decided it didn’t want to be in the branch business, it hardly needed those buildings.
Unfortunately, the PPL went back on its promise. In my view, the board never expected the city to take it up on the offer. It expected the city to come back and give the PPL more money, asking that it run the branch system.
But then the new library group, Providence Community Library, showed up and offered the city a credible alternative. When the city “called the bluff” of the PPL, and asked the PCL to run the branch system, the PPL board reneged on its offer to give the city the buildings.
From a legal standpoint, the PPL could argue that it holds title to the bricks and mortar of the branches. But the PPL also has many assets (including millions in savings in a foundation it created and controls). Those assets are a result of donations and taxpayer dollars, mostly from the people of Providence. While some of these donations were undoubtedly intended to support PPL’s lone remaining downtown building, many of these dollars (and certainly most of the taxpayer dollars provided by the city) were intended to benefit the branches.
Moreover, the trustees seem to have forgotten PPL’s own purpose. As set forth in its charter, the library was founded “to establish and maintain in the city of Providence a public library and such branches thereof as may be advisable and to establish buildings for the same; to perform and furnish library services to provide information, facilitate education, contribute to the economic and cultural development of Rhode Island, and to advocate and promote library service in the state so as to enrich the quality of life in Rhode Island.”
As the PPL has chosen to get out of the branch business, it seems entirely in keeping with the original purpose of the organization to let the city have those buildings, which were established to “furnish library services.”
We believe that those buildings belong to the people of Providence, as represented by the city. And the citizens of Providence have every right to say to the PPL: “Give us our libraries!” •
Mark McKenney, a Providence lawyer, recently stepped down after 10 years as chair of the State Library Board.
