Sparks Fly North of the Border

El Paso's mayor is leaning toward hiring a private company to run the library

Staff -- School Library Journal, 1/1/2000

Reports that Carlos M. Ramirez, the mayor of El Paso, TX, is considering hiring a private company to operate the city's public library system have left many librarians and residents disconsolate, convinced that library services and jobs are in jeopardy.

But Ramirez, who has been mayor of the financially strapped city of 600,000 for the past two years, thinks media reports have been misleading. "If people are thinking I want to privatize libraries in the classical meaning of the word--selling the assets, and getting rid of the employees, and getting rid of the books--that is incorrect," he insists. Instead, Ramirez says he wants to pool the city library's resources with those of the local schools, community college, and university.

Barbara Valle, acting director of the El Paso Public Library (ELPL) for the past nine months, says her staff is disheartened by talk of outsourcing services and reports that the mayor thinks libraries are not as important now that information is available on the Internet. In any case, Valle says that none of the nine branch libraries have computers with graphical Internet access.

Ramirez says he'll introduce a proposal to the city council on January 7 to consider outsourcing library services to a private company.