The Whole Point

I'm not sure if Nutter's got the symbols right.

by Isaiah Thompson

It's all about the libraries. You know it, I know it and the mayor knows it. They've become, in a word, symbolic. And so Mayor Nutter's recent threats to cut library budgets (along with other city services) can't help but be symbolic, too.

But I'm not sure he's got the symbols right.

He'd like the libraries to be symbols of what happens when City Council can't overcome its chronic fear of making hard decisions — like when it passed a 9.9 percent property tax hike instead of the 12.1 percent needed to balance the budget (or, as the mayor wanted, a 75-cent-per-gallon sweetened beverage tax) — leaving a $20 million mess for someone else — the mayor — to clean up. Nutter's budget, after all, had the libraries back to five-day service.

The mayor wants people to see the threat of newly reduced hours at their beloved libraries, grind their teeth, clench their fists and think, "That Council."

But I don't think that's how they'll see it at all. In Philadelphia politics, every vote has its price, and every powerful interest has its sacred cow. Just as Nutter's big-business friends have made clear that their taxes can't be raised, and Council's made it clear it won't be giving up cars or its DROP program, residents made clear more than a year ago that the libraries were theirs. The libraries are beloved not because they're new or grand, but because they're survivors, like many of the city's residents, of decades of decay and decline. They survived Mayor Street's attempts to whittle them down, while Councilman Nutter rallied against him; survived Nutter's own attempt to close 11 branches; survived the mayor's keeping all 11 open while keeping most of the money he cut.

It was a hard-won victory: Since then, the libraries have limped along with reduced staff and hours, seeing five to seven unscheduled closures every day for more than half a year, according to Friends of the Free Library. Only recently have they begun to get back on their feet.

But a victory it was, and since then the libraries have taken on the meaning of that victory — that the mayor's agenda does not trump the residents'. The libraries aren't Greenworks, 311, Rewards Recycling, or any other of the several ambitious, sleek, futuristic projects the mayor can call his own.

But that's the whole point.