Head Tale

Throwback Thursday – #tbt – @SaskParty Provides $5.2 Million To Fund SILS Province-wide Library System (March 2010) #skpoli #saveSKLibraries

For Throwback Thursday, I’m posting an article I found in the Spring 2010 issue of the Saskatchewan Library Trustees Association newsletter – a happier time only seven short years ago when the province’s ten library systems joined together to form SILS, a province-wide public library consortium that was the culmination of decades of inter-provincial cooperation between libraries.

SILS was created with funding and support from the Sask Party and even though I’m not a supporter of their party, I remember being very impressed with the Sask Party’s foresight in funding this uniquely Saskatchewan initiative to make us one of the only jurisdictions in the entire world to have a province-wide library system. I also thought it was a brilliant strategic move for them as it ensured that rural citizens aka “their base” would get access to the exact same services and resources as people in the cities.

I understand that we’re in tough economic times today.

But it’s almost unbelievable that a party that seven short years ago acknowledged, in the words of former Deputy Premier and Minister of Education, Ken Krawetz, how funding a province-wide library system would be more “convenient, cost-effective and accessible” for the people of the province has now decided to not only cut back on that funding but reduce it by so much that the very existence of the province’s public libraries is at risk, *especially* in rural areas.

Current economic situation notwithstanding, I honestly don’t understand how the same political party can flip so completely in less than a decade about the value of public libraries. The $5 million a year they’ll save is literally a rounding error in terms of the overall Saskatchewan budget, especially when there are many other places to cut wasteful spending much more effectively.

So again, this is my daily request for Minister Morgan to reconsider these drastic and likely irreversible cuts.

Librarian Says “Too Many MLAs” The Sequel! #skpoli #saveSKLibraries #yqr #yxe

So, yesterday’s post about “MLA says Saskatchewan has too many libraries. Librarian says Saskatchewan has too many MLAs” has become my most viewed post of all-time.

Within 24 hours, it’s blown away my previous record holder which, ironically, was about a random encounter I had with Brad Wall, soon after he axed the Film Tax Credit. That post took over a week to become my most viewed post of all-time. This one took less than 24 hours.

I think the point I made yesterday that there appears to be a bit of hypocrisy in the Sask Party’s recent budget cuts really resonates with people who feel that cuts aren’t being implemented fairly. Even people who aren’t library users or supporters have to wonder why we need to cut (not just cut but quite likely, as things stand now, *kill*) the province’s public library system but we also needed to add three completely unnecessary MLAs?

Education Minister, Don Morgan is in heavy spin mode today as I don’t think he expected the amount of pushback he’d get from across the province for his full frontal assault on public libraries.

Tonight on the news, he even brought out the fancy graphs to show how Saskatchewan supposedly has too many libraries compared to Alberta and Manitoba.

Of course, this graph is completely misleading and you don’t need to read too many library books to figure out why.

The bulk of Alberta’s population is centred in two places – Edmonton and Calgary. After that, there are EIGHT other cities in Alberta that are larger than Saskatchewan’s third largest city. It’s pretty obvious that when your population is more densely located, you need fewer libraries. Or, to put it another way, Calgary alone has a population that is roughly equal to the entire population of Saskatchewan. Would Minister Morgan suggest that our province could make do with just 20 libraries like Calgary has? Of course not!

The same thing happens in Manitoba where roughly half of their population lives in a single city. No wonder they also need fewer libraries per citizen than the much more sparsely populated and spread out province of Saskatchewan.

But forget all that. The point I made yesterday still stands. If Minister Morgan is going to talk about “services per member of the population”, let’s look at how many people each MLA serves in each prairie province…

Once again, Minister Morgan is being a whole lot misleading and a wee bit hypocritical with his comments today.

If Saskatchewan has too many libraries per capita (which it doesn’t as I explained above), then we also have too many MLAs per capita. But this budget greatly reduced funding to Saskatchewan’s libraries while not touching the number of MLAs – even though the arguments the Sask Party is using against libraries can just as easily be used against MLAs themselves.

Now, I wasn’t happy about it but I was willing to accept a few extra MLAs as it does provide better service for citizens and frees up time for stretched-thin MLAs to handle other responsibilities.

Will Mr. Morgan extend the same courtesy to Saskatchewan’s public libraries, admit his mistake and acknowledge they are necessary too?

¶ Posted 29 March 2017 § Infographic § Jobs § Library § News § Politics § Saskatchewan § Wisdom ‡ Comments (6) ° Tagged: economics, education, language, saskatchewan, science

“Sask Has Too Many Libraries” Says MLA. “Sask Has Too Many MLAs” says Librarian. #skpoli #SaveSKLibraries #yqr #yxe

The cut to Saskatchewan’s rural library system is $3.5 million dollars.

The cost of the three unnecessary MLAs added by the Sask Party before the last provincial election is $750,000 and the NDP actually ran on a platform of cutting those three plus three more which would save the province $1.5 million dollars per year.

Hmm, which is adds more value to an economically challenged province – 300 libraries serving nearly every community in the province or 3 MLAs that the province was just fine without up until last year?

[Edit: Someone on Facebook posted a fact I didn’t know – Saskatchewan has the sixth largest population of the provinces and territories in Canada but the third highest number of MLA’s. MLA’s have taken a pay cut but are any of them out of a job like some library staff already are and many others will be? Maybe that would be a better way to save money then on the backs of rural Saskatchewan’s public libraries.]

¶ Posted 28 March 2017 § Jobs § Library § News § Politics § Saskatchewan § Wisdom ‡ Comments (11) ° Tagged: economics, education, saskatchewan

Music Monday – “Libraries gave us power/Then work came and made us free/What price now for a shallow piece of dignity” #SaveSKLibraries

From a comment in SongMeanings.com…

the song is about working class perception and how everyone thinks ‘we dont talk about love, we only wanna get drunk’ whereas in reality the working class can be intelligent and useful, a lot of writers musicians actors sports people etc come from a working class background. ‘libraries gave us power’ highlights how no matter your background you can always improve and learn and ‘i wish i had a bottle…etc’ just means that you can improve as a person without being ashamed of where you come from although the upper classes do not recognise this hence the ‘what price now for a shallow piece of dignity’.

“A Design For Life” – Manic Street Preachers

¶ Posted 27 March 2017 § Library § MemoryLane § MusicMonday § Politics § PopCulture § UK § Wisdom § Work ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: economics, education, language, music

Global TV: “Protesters Decry Steep Budget Cuts Across Saskatchewan” #skpoli #SaveSKLibraries

This is the Global News story about the protest we attended yesterday.

One relevant quote from the article:

“We tried to tell the minister just what the services are, how broad they are [and] what kind of good they’re doing for the community, but it’s obviously falling on deaf ears,” said Saskatchewan Library Trustee Association board member Elmer Brenner.

They don’t seem to have a video of the clip online so I’ll try to get around to doing my highly technical transfer method of turning up the volume on our TV and pointing my iPhone camera at the screen to record it for upload to YouTube someday! 😉

¶ Posted 26 March 2017 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

Saturday Snap – Kids Protesting Cuts to Saskatchewan Public Libraries #skpoli #SaveSKLibraries

Since the Saskatchewan Provincial Budget was announced last week, it’s pretty amazing to see the groundswell of protest at some of the most egregious and harmful cuts, especially to the province’s historic, innovative and world renowned public library system. For example, one Facebook group that sprang up is quickly approaching 4000 members after less than a week in existence!

A rally that was organized on pretty short notice in Regina for Saturday afternoon attracted over 100 people. More events across the province are being planned as well.

Before the budget was released, many sectors were expecting cuts of around 5%. That is what happened for the large public library systems in Regina and Saskatoon. But rural libraries got cut by over FIFTY per cent! (And to make it even worse, these cuts were announced without any consultation *and* are retroactive to the start of the year after 1/4 of their budgets were spent on a totally different set of assumptions.)

I don’t want to be too strong in my condemnation of these cuts but some of the quotes from government officials indicate that, at the very least, there is a lack of understanding about the role that the public library plays in modern life in terms of being a community hub for long-term citizens and new Canadians, an economic driver, and providing a huge return on investment.

It’s also shocking to see the Sask Party, who have the largest part of their base in rural Saskatchewan, make a move that will drive a stake into the libraries which are the heart of many rural communities.

I’m not sure if it’s true but there’s an anecdote in libraries about an attempted cut to library funding in a small town. The all-male town council, who weren’t library users for the most part, proposed the cuts but then their wives showed up at the next council meeting and the cuts were just as quickly cancelled.

I think there may be a similar disconnect here between the people making the decisions to cut funding to libraries and the response they’re going to get from the users.

We’ll see what happens but if the women and children (and yes, even many men) who love the libraries of rural Saskatchewan keep making noise, look out!

¶ Posted 25 March 2017 § Family § Internet § Jobs § Library § News § Pace § Politics § Sasha § Saskatchewan § Work ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged: book, economics, education, history, saskatchewan

Friday Fun Link – Southpaw Regional Wrestling

WWE has released some short web-only videos of a fictional 1980’s wrestling promotion, Southpaw Regional Wrestling.

Current superstars play up the stereotypical characters and tropes of that era of wrestling with love, affection and great humour – which makes this one of the most entertaining things WWE has done in the past year!

Here’s a raving commentary…

…and a taste of the real thing:

¶ Posted 24 March 2017 § FridayFunLink § Humour § Meme § MemoryLane § PopCulture § Sports § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: sports, television

Throwback Thursday – #tbt – Family Photo at Regina Public Library (June 2011)

When we did a family photo shoot in 2011, we decided to use downtown as our location which naturally led us to include a few shots around my employer, Regina Public Library.

¶ Posted 23 March 2017 § Family § Library § Pace § Photo § Shea § ThrowbackThursday § Work ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: cute

Some Random Thoughts on #skbudget #skpoli

Brad Wall and his Sask Party buddies released their latest budget today and depending on the commentator you’re reading, it was either (borderline) cruel, cruel & unusual or a bloodbath.

Some thoughts…

Who goes through a massive resource boom and ends up raising PST? If you said the NDP, you’d be ~~brainwashed~~ wrong. That decision to raise taxes would be your (supposed) tax-hating friends in the Sask Party.
There are a lot of Internet forums filled with true-believers defending this budget. But politics isn’t sports, you’re not supposed to cheer for your team no matter how bad their management is or how poorly their players perform. And I think a *lot* of less vocal Sask Party supporters will be quietly regretting their decision as the full impact of this budget starts to hit.
Speaking of, there are a couple things in this budget that may get more pushback from Brad Wall’s rural base than he realises – on one hand, cutting STC seems like low-hanging fruit if 25 of 27 routes are unprofitable (but then, why not go to less frequent service or use vans instead of buses or other cost-saving measures instead of cutting in completely? It’s not going to look good to the townsfolk when old Granny Jones out in Dog River can’t take the bus in to her opthamologist appointment in the big city or Farmer John can’t get a part delivered quickly and cheaply.) Also, big cuts to rural libraries could really backfire as I’ve seen firsthand how much libraries mean in small communities. (The anecdote in libraries is that the men on council will try to cut library funding since they never use it but then their wives will get wind of the cuts and suddenly funding gets restored!) 😉
Although they get a small tax credit to compensate for some cost increases, there is also lots of pain for lower income people including the incredible indignity of the government no longer paying the minimal costs of funerals for people on social assistance.
The Sask Party government got us in this mess in large part by overestimating resource prices over the past few years. Yet they are disproportionately trying to get savings on the backs of workers – low-wage government cleaners, STC employees, public sector workers.
The government not only raised the PST but added it to numerous items (restaurant meals, children’s clothes, construction projects, snack foods) that were previously exempt which means all those things are basically getting a 6% price increase. They estimated how much this would bring in but I wonder if they based that estimate on previous total sales for these categories or if they also accounted for a likely drop in sales since the prices will jump so much?
I guess my biggest complaint is that this budget didn’t have to be so brutal at all except…
- The Sask Party spent like drunk sailors the past few years when times were good including whistling through a $1+ billion surplus left to them by the NDP when they left office in 2007.
- They never created a sovereign wealth fund like pretty much every major oil producing region in the world (including left-wing socialist bastions like Alberta, North Dakota and Texas have.)
- They did create three new unnecessary MLA positions that cost the province around $3 million a year, money that could be used much more effectively.
- Saskatchewan corporation, Cameco, potentially owes around two billion dollars in money hidden via tax loopholes. The Feds are going after their share but Sask isn’t going after our province’s share which could amount to $350 million.
- Honestly, if I summarize all the ways that the Sask Party has mismanaged and abused our province’s finances, I’d just be re-hashing the much better work done by Tammy Robert over at OurSask.ca (and she’s not exactly a left-wing shill. She used to work for the John Gormley show and admits that she had a Sask Party lawn sign as recently as this last election. But she’s also a hard-hitting, tell-it-like-it-is journalist who puts many of our mainstream journalists to shame with her in-depth work.)