PROVIDENCE – Providence Public Library has submitted a $5 million, one-year proposal for providing municipal library services to the City of Providence, PPL officials announced today at the monthly meeting of the 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.
“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,” William Simmons, vice chair of the PPL board of directors and a PPL representative to the working group, said at the meeting today, “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 said, the library will be represented in those talks by its lawyer, Dan Prentiss.
Additional information on the nonprofit Providence Public Library and the city library system is available at www.provlib.org.
