On Monday evening, Cedarbrae library near Markham and Lawrence in Scarborough was humming — or whatever the muted librarian-approved equivalent of humming is. It was packed, in any event: the Youth Hub was full of teenagers at the Homework Help table and crowded around the televisions playing video games. The Learning Centre’s rows of desks were filled with people working away on laptops. The study rooms were fully occupied, the work stations lined with people, the computer terminals virtually all in use, the kids book nook area being well put to use. Between the shelves towards the back of the upper floor, where the library houses book collections in 12 languages including Hindi, Tamil and Pashto, a group of high school-aged kids were lounging on the floor, reading, doing homework, chatting.

The Florence Cruikshank Community room on the lower level was also pretty full for the October meeting of the Toronto Public Library Board. In a presentation, library workers’ union President Maureen O’Reilly pointed out that the room had been painted, its carpets steam cleaned, its light fixtures dusted — and that the parking lot had its lines repainted and lights replaced — in anticipation of the meeting, “just for you,” she told board members, who sat beside a table of sandwiches marked with a sign that read “Board Members Only.” O’Reilly suggested that such things have been, to save money, allowed to fall into disrepair, but are brightened up to mask the effects of penny pinching when the board comes around.

It was a point made because penny pinching was on the agenda.

But no sprucing up was required to make clear that the Cedarbrae branch was being put to good use as a centre of the community it serves — a community that includes two “Neighbourhood Improvement Areas” designated as underprivileged by the city and whose population is largely Black, South Asian and Asian. One needed only to glance at the surroundings on the way in on an average weeknight to see it. The City Librarian cites statistics showing that fully 70 per cent of Torontonians make use of the library systems services, a number that might only seem too low looking at Cedarbrae’s Monday drawing power.

The board had to consider if this branch, among others, would remain open on Monday nights.

Agenda item 13 was a report from city librarian Vickery Bowles, “2017 Operating Budget – City Target.” It outlined recommendations in response to Mayor John Tory and city council’s direction that the library prepare a budget 2.6 per cent lower than the 2016 budget. The report makes clear that the library’s preferred budget, previously presented to the board, shows a 0.9 per cent increase over 2016 — a number she calls “responsible” given that in the past six years, the library’s budget has risen by less than half the rate of inflation.

Still, the demand is a budget proposal to cut 2.6 per cent, so an additional $6.195 million in savings needed to be found. (By way of comparison, the total provincial funding for the Toronto library system is $5.5 million.) Since 98 per cent of the budget is made up of staffing, collections (that is, the books and materials the library has) and fixed facilities and IT costs, there are not a lot of “other expenditures” to cut, Bowles’ report said.

So the proposal was to reduce library hours across the system, which would mean a “district” library like Cedarbrae might now close one weeknight evening per week, while a “neighbourhood” branch — 45 of them, in fact — would be closed three weeknight evenings per week. In all, the result would be 10.8 per cent reduction in the hours of service for the system, with 55 of the city’s 100 branches seeing their hours reduced. The report further suggested cutting the budget for acquiring library materials by 9.2 per cent.

There was not really a debate. There was an extended procedural discussion about the various ways of rejecting the recommendations — voting to “receive” them for information versus voting against them altogether — and how more information on the implications for specific branches could be requested if the board was officially rejecting the whole report. But no one in the room seemed to support the course of action outlined.

“I want to make clear I’m not recommending these service reductions,” Bowles said, even though the report’s language presented the contents as recommendations. “I’m presenting what it would take to meet the 2.6 per cent reduction.”

“This would rip the heart out of what we’ve been building up,” board member Ross Parry said at one point.

In the end, the board voted unanimously, 11-0, to reject the recommendations. This is, however, not the end of the matter. The city’s budget committee already has the report and will make its own decisions about what to do with it, and then the subject will go on to the mayor’s executive committee and then to city council. But perhaps it will be noted the library board opposes the cuts.

The meeting wrapped up just as the library was closing. Scores of library patrons, still there at 8:30 p.m., were being directed out through the exits as the meeting’s attendees left. There was a minor traffic jam in the parking lot.

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At the streetlight in front of the library, while I sat in my car waiting to turn left, a girl and her mother who had just left the building were crossing in front of me. The girl, about seven years old, was clutching a large picture book to her chest. And in my headlights, she was dancing: twirling and laughing and hopping up and down. Celebrating, in a way, another Monday evening at the library.