MUNICIPAL ENVIRONMENT – THE LOCAL STORY

Clarence-Rockland reflects many other municipal governments in its hierarchical structure: council of elected representatives with a mayor at the head overseeing a city hall managed by a CAO. There are eight city councillors of which half represent the mostly rural towns that were joined to the larger, more urban town of Rockland in the 1998 amalgamation.

The various departments managed by the CAO follow most other municipalities, (by-law enforcement, financial services, human resources, infrastructure management, recreational and cultural management, etc.) The heads of these departments meet on a regular basis to assure that the needs of the community are being met and that the management of the city is following the plan laid out by the council.

The Library has its board with a president at its head. It is the publicly elected municipal council that selects the five member board which then selects from a president amongst themselves. A strong link is maintained with the City through the presence of two of the City’s councillors on the board.

The Library, like City Hall, has some discreet “departments” though the staffing levels are not as extensive, managed by a CEO. Often, it is one person handling a particular responsibility. These responsibilities follow most library profiles (circulation, cataloguing, tech services, programming and outreach, etc.) With the small size of staffing, some particular tasks are shared by all, notably circulation and readers’ advisory. Staff do not meet on a regular basis but communication is both formal (e-mails, directives and occasional all day developmental meetings) to ensurer that goals and objectives established by the board are achieved.

The city council is formed by the will of the people whereas the library board is formed by the will of the council.

The Library has had an awkward fit into the City’s structure. Principally, it came done to the Library’s identity within the community. It was and continues to be the Library’s responsibility in advocating its importance. And this had not happened successfully in the past. It has lacked focus and strength to become an essential service. It has relied upon old practices (i.e., lending books) and poorly executing other projects to attend to community needs.

The consequences of such action has been little capital investment from the City (when compared to other municipalities of similar size), an underground network of friends supplying each other with reading material because book budgets could not answer demand, and a more superficial view of a library’s worth.

The improvement in “fitting in” the community has been internal:

·         staff restructuring: assigning specific tasks to a specific post and hiring/matching qualified staff;
·         repositioning our place in the communit: children’s programming, purchasing material based on patron’s requests;

and external:

·         change of ideas at City Hall: hiring of key people in the financial department and in the CAO who affirm the greater role of a Library in the community.

Having this internal support at the City level, re-branding the Library and producing programmes such as the TD Summer Reading Club which went from around 60 kids in 2012 to over 130 in 2013 has helped City Council change their view of the Library as a “department,” and a fairly small one at that, to an independent, independently managed and responsibly operated community service which they feel more prepared to support.