Fiscal Year 2010 Budget

From: Lawson, Rhea - HPL
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 5:26 PM
To: HPL - All Employees
Subject: Fiscal Year 2010 Budget
Importance: High

___________________________________

Dear Staff,
Today I met with managers and supervisors from across the system to discuss our Fiscal Year 2010 (FY10) budget. I am writing this message to share the key points from this meeting with you. In addition, I will soon schedule six “town hall” type meetings across the system to have this same discussion with any staff member who would like to attend.

The economic downturn has been consistently in the media for several months now. We have seen how the downturn has affected cities, people, businesses and libraries across the nation. Many libraries have had to make severe budget adjustments resulting in service hour reductions, branch closures, staff reductions and other measures to help meet their budgets. (For more, please see http://www.libraryjournal.com/ )

What is new news - is that Houston is finally starting to feel the pinch of the tightening economy. As a result, all City of Houston departments have been directed by Mayor White to operate within reduced FY10 budgets. In a recent interview with the Houston Chronicle, the mayor stated, “We need to operate differently. We need to have an enhanced and increased focus on organizational changes that would reflect the fact that the U.S. is in a recession.”

As of today, our FY10 budget target is $39.3 million, $400,000 lower than our FY09 budget of $39.7 million. While this does not seem like a large amount on its surface, we must incorporate this reduction while preparing to operate four new or expanded locations in FY10, accommodate the 3% HOPE raise and increases in healthcare costs.

We have taken increasingly difficult steps to meet this target. The overall commitment and charge to all City of Houston departments throughout the budget process has been to do everything possible to avoid lay offs and to look instead at alternative ways of getting our work done - to make adjustments in processes and, in some cases, to reallocate existing staff and fiscal resources.

The City’s current budget proposal does not require the loss of jobs. It does, however, call for several significant changes in how we will do business moving forward. Working with Meller Langford and Roosevelt Weeks, I asked several of our colleagues to research, think about and make recommendations regarding how we reframe services in two major areas – 1) the provision of services and assistance to non-English speakers, and 2) the provision of library services on Sundays.

Service and Assistance to non-English speakers

In a perfect world, we would be able to provide in-person assistance to non-English speakers at any time it is needed at any location across the system. Our budgets have never allowed us that luxury, and the FY10 budget is no exception. Still, we have the honor of serving one of the most diverse populations in the country. How can we do so in a way that helps us meet our budget and still provides extraordinary service to our customers?

A Bilingual Pay Committee was formed and given the responsibility of mapping out a strategic way of how HPL allocates bilingual pay, and consists of Shammi Gill (Public Services), Thuy Vo, (HPL Express) and Cesar De La Rosa (Human Resources). The standards developed by the Committee are based on the Municipal Employees Bilingual policy, Executive Order 1-21. For more information on this Executive Order, please see http://www.houstontx.gov/execorders/1-21.html.

The Committee researched how other library systems handle this question, reviewed our current practices and made a recommendation to the Executive Leadership Team. Their recommendation is to provide bilingual pay to qualified staff at World Languages “hub” locations across the city, the Central Library’s World Languages Center, the Cataloging Section of the Technical Services Division, and select administrative units where bilingual ability is required.
The World Languages “hubs” were selected based on the demographics in their service area and the number of service contacts at each location. The “hubs” are: Collier, Henington-Alief, Stella Link, Park Place, Stanaker, Central and Carnegie. Staff at these hubs will have responsibility for providing assistance to non-English speakers for their locations and across the system. Operational details are still being developed – you will hear more about these from your managers over the next two months.

To view the presentation made by the Committee at today’s meeting, please see https://hplnet.hpl.lib.tx.us/documents/Bilingual-pay-thurs.ppt

Library Service on Sundays

Providing library services on Sundays presents a dilemma for many libraries across the country. We know that our customers appreciate the ability to visit the library on the weekend, when it better fits into their schedule. Yet many libraries struggle with how to arrange scheduling to cover those hours, particularly on Sundays.
Those of you who have worked with me for the past 3 ½ years know that I am passionate about providing service to our customers in a way that meets their needs. What helps our customers in this case is maintaining our Sunday service hours.

We have traditionally covered Sunday hours by paying overtime and premium pay (depending on job classification) to those who volunteer to work. Essentially, HPL is a seven day a week operation so I asked a group of our colleagues to help us find an alternative way to continue to provide Sunday service to our customers while staying within our FY10 budget.
Currently, the Houston Public Library has eight locations open on Sundays from 1pm to 5pm to meet our customer demand: the Central Library, Henington-Alief, Collier, Jungman, Park Place, Scenic Woods, McGovern-Stella Link and HPL Express Discovery Green.

The committee, which consists of Syma Zerkow (Technical Services), Mike VanCampen (Central Services), Regina Stemmer (Neighborhood Libraries), Rebecca Hubert (Neighborhood Libraries) and Kemo Curry (Special Collections), re-evaluated our scheduling process to determine how best to incorporate Sunday hours into the regular forty hour work week of our staff. By doing so, we can continue to offer the necessary coverage on Sundays while minimizing the use of the discretionary pay.

The committee’s charge was to develop procedures to staff Sundays, distribute the responsibility for staffing Sunday hours equitably and minimize scheduling difficulties. The new Sunday service plan calls for all Public Services staff (including Library Chiefs, Technical Services staff and Special Collections staff) and HPL Express staff to share the responsibility of Sunday service by working approximately six to eight Sundays throughout the year – resulting in about one Sunday every other month with work schedules adjusted to allow employees time off during the week that he/she works on Sunday. Staff from other divisions will be integrated into the plan after the initial implementation.

Sunday hours will remain 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the current locations: Central, Henington-Alief, Jungman, Scenic Woods, Collier, Park Place, Stella Link, and HPL Express-Discovery Green. To view the presentation made by this group today, please see https://hplnet.hpl.lib.tx.us/documents/sunday-hours.ppt

I want to thank the teams that committed their time and energy into helping us find solutions to issues listed above. The members of these committees have a deep commitment to the provision of extraordinary customer service, to the Houston Public Library, and to the staff with whom they work. They were asked to review important issues and make tough recommendations. I hope you will join me in thanking them for their efforts.

If you have any questions about what you’ve read here, please provide them to your manager or supervisor. They will, in turn, submit them to Greg Simpson, who will coordinate responses and post them on the intranet. Additionally, individuals affected by these changes will be contacted directly by the end of next week.

I cannot stress often enough that we are in a time of great change. We simply cannot continue to do business as usual – especially while we are in a recession. As always, my plan is to be transparent about the changes, to engage staff in the process, and to communicate in a number of ways. These are difficult times, to be sure. But difficult times also present great opportunity. While the current recession requires that we make some difficult decisions as an organization, it also allows us to take a new look at how we provide service to our customers. There is still much work being done in this area so stay tuned. We are scheduled to make our budget presentation to the Fiscal Affairs Committee of City Council on June 2, 2009.

Finally, I want to thank you for your work to make the Houston Public Library the best library anywhere. I know that we may be facing tough challenges ahead. But I also know that when we all pull together and commit to doing the best we possibly can for our customers and for each other – no one can stop us. I know this because I’ve seen it. I saw it in the work we did providing service to our community after Hurricane Ike, and I see it ways large and small in the day-to-day interactions with customers and colleagues.

Sincerely,
Dr. Lawson


Rhea Brown Lawson, MLS, PhD
Director, Houston Public Library


We give our children two things...
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