According to the City Council of the City of Escondido, our public library is no not ours anymore. By a 4-1 vote, it is now a corporate run concern whose company is answerable to its shareholders not the citizens of Escondido. Council member Olga Diaz was the lone nay vote.

Ultimately, this decision will be challenged, and decided, in court. It will be argued that the City Council’s decision is ultra vires (beyond the scope of their authority) and whose Board of Trustees is correctly entrusted with such decisions. The Board of Trustees did not agree with this privatization of public services.

There are better solutions to these budgetary matters. Falling for the privatization card as the “less expensive” alternative is short sighted. A library is more than a building and some books. It’s a hall of knowledge through which generations pass and add to the collective wisdom of the community. There is no line item for that on the corporate balance sheet.

Escondido library to be outsourced to private company

sandiegouniontribune.com

The Escondido Public library will be run by a private company and its 30 city employees will either be out of a job or will go to work for Maryland-based Library Systems & Services.