🔭 PLATFORM VIEW: Olivia Chow’s seven-days-a-week library plan
🔗 LINK: oliviachow.ca/olivia_ch…
🔧 DOABLE? Yes.
💰 COSTED? Yes.
✨ OVERALL: ⭐️⭐️⭐️½ (3.5 out of five)
I’ve always been Library People, but my appreciation for Toronto’s library system increased exponentially after we had a kid. Libraries are a skeleton-key solution to kid boredom. Even if there aren’t programs like the (delightful) Storytime on, libraries offer a chance of scenery, and with a baby/toddler, often that’s enough.
But here’s my frustration: the hours. One of local library branches opens at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 10 a.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays. It’s closed altogether on Sundays and Mondays. On Saturday, it opens at 9 a.m., but closes at 5 p.m., whereas other days it is open until at least 6 p.m.
The problem isn’t just that the hours are sometimes inconvenient, but also that I can never remember what the damned hours are.
More open hours and less variety would help a lot. People would probably visit more often if they could be confident their local branch would be open when they swing by.
Olivia Chow has announced a policy to address this. Launched in concert with an endorsement from the library worker union, Chow says she’ll put up $5 million a year to “ensure all 100 public libraries are open seven days a week and she will expand weekday hours of libraries across the city.”
A little too vague on the second part for my liking. How much expansion of weekday hours are we talking? It’d be nice to know specifics.
Still, Chow’s plan appears to be somewhat more ambitious than Councillor Josh Matlow’s plan to expand more library hours, which to his credit came earlier. Matlow is proposing a $1.5 million investment to add Sunday service hours.
Throwing a bit more money toward the library can’t hurt. In fact, I think there’s an opportunity for the library to grab some additional users by leaning into the WFH trend and marketing their spaces to people who need a quiet place to work for an afternoon.
We’re not talking big money here. Chow says she can get $5 million from property taxes, and she can — it works out to about a 0.13% increase and less than five bucks a year.
Small money, big benefit, decent policy.
PLATFORM VIEW is a daily(ish) feature by City Hall Watcher on Substack Notes. Got a request for a candidate policy proposal I should review? Let me know.