PVLD Director's Blog

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Thank you Stephen Abram for sharing this l"manifesto" from the Canadian design firm Bruce Mau Design.  What a rich source of perspectives and ideas...I suspect it is one of those lists, like the Cluetrain Manifesto, that I will come back to again and again, and each time different elements will resonate. 

Today #3 - Process is more important than outcome really struck a nerve and helped me realize why some recent activities have been less productive than I had hoped.  I need to remember that if the process is sound, the outcome will be right even if it is not the exact outcome I set out to achieve.

I also loved #16's description of collaboration, in all its messiness and hope and #25's admonition "Don't clean your desk" made me feel a whole lot better about taking off for the Eureka Institute tomorrow and leaving behind piled up desk!

What really resonated with you?

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations. Collectively, they are how we approach every project.

1. Allow events to change you.You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
2. Forget about good.Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.
3. Process is more important than outcome.When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
5. Go deep.The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
6. Capture accidents.The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
7. Study.A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
8. Drift.Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
9. Begin anywhere.John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
10. Everyone is a leader.Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
11. Harvest ideas.Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
12. Keep moving.The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
13. Slow down.Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
14. Don’t be cool.Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
15. Ask stupid questions.Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
16. Collaborate.The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
17. ____________________.Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
18. Stay up late.Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.
19. Work the metaphor.Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
20. Be careful to take risks.Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
21. Repeat yourself.If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
22. Make your own tools.Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
24. Avoid software.The problem with software is that everyone has it.
25. Don’t clean your desk.You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
26. Don’t enter awards competitions.Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
27. Read only left-hand pages.Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."
28. Make new words.Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
29. Think with your mind.Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
30. Organization = Liberty.Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'
31. Don’t borrow money.Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
32. Listen carefully.Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
33. Take field trips.The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
34. Make mistakes faster.This isn’t my idea -- I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
35. Imitate.Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
36. Scat.When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
38. Explore the other edge.Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
40. Avoid fields.Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
41. Laugh.People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
42. Remember.Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
43. Power to the people.Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

Blogging Sabbatical

The past couple of months that have been extraordinarily busy and issue-filled, and it's been hard to find the time or energy to write this blog.  Even the other blogs I follow have not been their usual source of ideas and inspiration.

Over the next few weeks I will be away from work for all but a couple of days for one reason or another (a bit of vacation, a couple of conferences, and a week serving as a mentor on a residential leadership development program for emerging library leaders) and I suspect I will find it even harder to find time and energy to write anything interesting or meaningful.

With that in mind I've decided to declare a brief "blogging sabbatical".  I'm not planning on writing any posts between this one and when my upcoming travels come to an end on November 2nd.

That said, I'll still my skimming my usual assortment of blogs and other reading material and I am hopeful that the changes of scenery/routine, the exposure to new energy at the Eureka Leadership Institute, and the opportunity to hear new things and interact with colleagues at the Internet Librarian and California Library Association conferences will reinvigorate me. 

Who knows, I may just have a flash of inspiration that leads me to break my sabbatical!  If not, I'm looking forward to returning to more regular posting in November.  Stay tuned!

So you think you make rational decisions?

Something to think about on a sweltering Friday!

Feeling old!

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the introduction of the Sony Walkman.  I was in high school then, and after saving the earnings from my part-time job and some generous gifts from my parents I was the proud owner of a component stereo that not only had speakers the size of a bar fridge but BOTH a turntable for records and a cassette tape player/recorder.  Now I could not only listen to music in the privacy of my room, but copy the music from records to make my very own mix tapes.  The copying took place at about the same speed as the songs actually played, so you can imagine what a labor of love each tape was.  The very fortunate among us had cassette players in our cars (although some still even had 8-track tape players!), or even very early "boomboxes" that took about 16 D-cell batteries so there was a degree of music portability, but not much!

I thought I was totally set in the audio department until I picked up a copy of Seventeen Magazine (it's funny how clearly I remember this!) and saw an article about the very first Walkman.  Wow!  Imagine being able to take those laboriously created tapes and listen to them wherever you went!  As I recall the first Walkmen cost more than $300 - almost as much as my entire stereo with its various components and monster speakers.

I wanted one so badly, but it would take several years before even the knock-offs came into my price range.

All that is by way of background to this story from Scotland about a 13 year old boy who swapped his Ipod for a Walkman for a week.  I heard the lad interviewed on NPR a couple of weeks ago...his tale of learning that tapes have two sides and actually need to be turned over was even funnier in audio than in this article.

For those late Boomers/early Gen Xers out there...hard to believe we're this old, huh? I wonder what the teen-agers of 30 years hence will make of the IPod....

(And it sure was more fun writing this post that the one I set out to write about the budget!  That will have to wait until next week when we know more of the grisly details of what the State will do to us.)

A timely reminder

Things have been both frantically busy and stressful around here, so coming across this video was a timely reminder that there is more to life than work and striving for success...enjoy!

Trading off instead of trading up

One of the challenges we've been facing here at PVLD is the conflict between growing workloads and shrinking resources.  Some of the workload growth is beyond our control - like the recession-driven increases in library usage.  Some is a result of having an energetic, enthusiastic, and ambitious staff who take the initiative to develop new programs and services.  Some is the result of the fact that scarce resources  can actually create work - for example, in times of healthy budgets for books you can pretty much order anything that sounds reasonable without a lot of thought or analysis, but when money is tight you need to spend more time and effort ensuring that every purchase decision delivers optimum value.

In any case, it is becoming increasingly obvious that we can't continue to do everything with our available staff and resources!  This is forcing some tough decisions about what we need to give up, decisions made tougher because the staff are so passionate about what they do and so reluctant to ratchet back services to the community.

That's why I thought this line from the It's All Good Blog was so apt -

People are thinking differently about their choices today--no longer trading up but trading off.

That's a great description of the kinds of choices we are being forced to make right now - at the library but also in our personal lives. 

It's been a while since we've had to ask "If I do this, what else can't I do?" and here at PVLD we're finding it pretty difficult. 

We'd love some feedback about what is really important to you as a library user, so as we make these choices it's with your interests in mind....just leave a comment on this blog!

Rivers, Rocks, and Perspective

First, thank you to all who have expressed concern and support following my post last Friday.  I know some people have questioned why I would write something like that because it portrayed PVLD in a less than favorable light and also had a level of emotional content that people are not used to reading in a library blog.

The answer is that I write the blog for seveal reasons - to help me process my own thinking about what is happening at PVLD,in the library world in general, and in my own leadership practice; to provide transparency about the library, both the great things our staff achieve and the challenges we face, to our stakeholders (the community, staff, and supporters); and to give the community insight into the workings of an organization that they support with their tax dollars, donations, and time.    My blog is not intended to be a PR tool to just promote good news about the library, and Friday's post reflected all of these objectives. 

That said, I had an opportunity this weekend both to get a bit of a break and to reflect some more on what is going on here at PVLD.  Upon reflection I think that my analogy of rocks in a river was sound and that we certainly are feeling the stress of falling water levels, exposed rocks, and more turbulence.  I also realized, though, that the rocks look bigger when you are on the river than when you are sitting on the bank...and even smallish rocks can look pretty enormous if you find yourself out of the canoe and actually in the water.

To continue the analogy, last week felt like I fell out of the canoe.  I was feeling more stressed than I have at any other time in my 5 1/2 years at PVLD for lots of reasons, only some of them work-related. I was also feeling more tired than usual after a couple of months of intense work and more than the usual outside-of-business hours work commitments.  The result was that I felt like I had fallen out of the canoe and like I was bouncing around in the current and barely keeping my head above water...and as a result the rocks I was seeing an bumping into seemed enormous.

Over the weekend I got myself out of the water and onto the riverbank, and the rocks don't look nearly as big from that perspective.  I was able to confirm that I had done nothing wrong in sharing information about potential MOU changes with employees; had my bruises healed with an outpouring of support from my Board, friends, and colleagues; and realized that both PVLD and I are strong enough to navigate these rough waters.

Am I still concerned about the financial pressures we face? Absolutely.  Our revenues continue to deteriorate, and while the borrowing of local property tax revenues seems to be off the table for now, it could re-emerge as a threat in an instant if the Legislature is not able to reach agreement on a budget or at any time after a budget is adopted given that the State's financial situation continues to deteriorate....but we'll navigate that waterfall when we come to it.

Am I still concerned about the union's comment that I should not talk to employees about possible changes in MOU conditions - yes, but I'm not going to let that fundamentally change my leadership style or my basic personality.  If we need to "shoot the rapids" of a fiscal emergency we'll work together as a PVLD team to do it in a way that inflicts the minimum possible pain on all concerned.

The biggest lesson for me is that I need to find a way to keep myself out of the water.  I can't let myself get so stressed that I lose the perspective of being able to accurately size up the rocks in the river and work with the staff to deal with them.  I need more time on the riverbank and less time in the canoe - after all we have a talented and dedicated management team that is quite capable of steering the canoe without me!

With that I am off for a few days of vacation, and after that I have promised myself to do much better at taking the breaks I need.  If I'm not in the office,or available by email,  or out in the community as much as I have been in the past it will be because I'm taking some time to rest on the river bank.

I'll be back next week...hopefully in better spirits...

Rocks in the River

I sometimes think that managing an organization is like steering a canoe down a river.  When times are good and resources are abundant it's like being on a river that is full of water and flowing freely.  In those times you need to keep your eyes ahead and look for bends and you may encounter patches of still water that require everyone to paddle harder, but generally you can plot your course and steer accordingly without much fear of hitting major obstacles.

When times are tough it is like the water level in the river drops and all of the sudden rocks that had been submerged start showing.  Now instead of focusing on the bends and curves downstream you also have to be very alert to the rocks that might be right in front of you and the turbulence they cause.

Here at PVLD the rocks are starting to show.  Sometimes they are inefficient work practices that were acceptable when resources were abundant and are now barriers to getting things done.  Sometimes they are policies that no one paid attention to but that seem absurd when exposed.  Sometimes they are working relationships that were strained even in good times but tear apart completely when they hit the rough water.  Sometimes they are work performance issues that could be tolerated in good times but are intolerable in the more stressful environment. 

Most of the time the rocks can be addressed - streamline the work practice, change the policy, address the work relationship or performance issues, etc.

But sometimes they are so big that they challenge the very way you lead the organization.

This week I hit one of those, and I'm still bleeding.

On Wednesday we had a meeting with union representatives to discuss options for dealing with the financial situation we are in and, in particular, the uncertainty about whether the State will borrow our property tax revenues.  It's no secret to anyone who's watched my body language or who follows me on Twitter or Facebook that I was upset and disappointed by that meeting.

People may think "She's just upset that she didn't get what she wanted."  It is true that I am very disappointed that a proposal that I think was fair to employees and bought us some time to deal with the fiscal crisis was rejected without even giving the affected employees an opportunity to consider it, but that's how these things go sometimes and the union is accountable for its own decisions.

What really hit me hard was that the union informed me that the employee presentations that I made a couple of weeks ago, during which I explained the budget situation and talked about what I saw as some of the options for addressing it including things that I clearly stated would need to be negotiated and agreed with the union, was in their view an unfair bargaining practice.  This was certainly not my intent.  I was just trying to keep employees informed about the situation, help them understand the cost structure of the organization, and give my views on the kinds of employment actions being taken by other organizations and widely reported in terms of whether they would be effective at PVLD.  I clearly identified those that I understood to be subject to union negotiation.

 I was told that all discussion of employment terms and conditions governed by our Memorandum of Understanding must be held with union representatives and not employees, and the unspoken implication was that to do otherwise  would expose me to a charge of unfair labor practices.

This hit me like a punch in the stomach, and it has taken me a couple of sleepless nights and a couple of days of hard thinking and reflection to understand why.

Not being able to  to talk to Bargaining Unit employees below the management level will certainly require a change to my leadership style, which tends towards trying to share as much information as possible, but I've worked in that environment before and I can certainly do it.

What I am finding truly agonizing is that 1/2 of the PVLD Management Team are, for some reason shrouded in the fog of history, in the same Bargaining Unit as the other employees.

When I arrived at PVLD 5 1/2 years ago I found a divided management staff.  The "non-represented" Managers who handle the administrative functions of the District (Finance, HR, Facilities, and IT) were clearly treated differently/better than the managers of the library operations departments (Adult Services, Branches, Circulation, Technical Services, Young Readers Services) who were responsible for delivering the services at the core of our mission,  supervise the vast majority of our employees, and have the greatest influence on how our customers and our community perceive the library.

The "administrative" Managers were clustered (sequestered really) in the "admin corridor", which had its own kitchen area, restricted access, and the aura of an executive office.  The Finance Director and Library Director developed and managed the budget with little input or involvement from the "library service" managers.  Management meetings that included both groups were rare.

For the past 5 1/2 years I have worked very hard to create a single leadership team that encompasses both the administrative and library service functions and works together to create and execute the strategic vision for the organization.  We've changed the budgeting process to give every Department Manager more involvement in and accountability for the budget for their department.  We meet regularly as a Management Team.  We introduced a new Strategic Planning process that engaged the entire Management Team along with the Board of Trustees in developing the Strategic Plan. And along the way the fact that 1/2 of the team members were subject to a different system of employment was submerged as we worked together to steer the PVLD canoe towards the future.

On Wednesday that boulder became exposed, and I smacked into it with devastating results.

The reality is that at a time when PVLD needs unity of leadership more than ever, I can't engage 1/2 of the Management Team (the ones who provide leadership to most of our employees) in helping think through options and scenarios for addressing our budget deficit if those options and scenarios include changes to the MOU (and of course many of them do).  Those options and scenarios could have a profound impact on our financial situation, our services, how we are perceived and supported by the people we serve and who pay our salaries, and on employee morale and we will be making decisions without the input of the Managers who are responsible for providing our core services.

Even more significantly to me is that the force of impact of this boulder has made a huge crack in our efforts to create a single, unified leadership team and I'm not sure how we're going to glue it back together when the water levels rise again and the turbulence subsides.  It is breaking me apart that I can't share information or get input on critical issues with people whose opinions I respect enormously, and that I now in effect have to go back to having a two-tiered management team.

It also means that I can no longer pretend that PVLD is fundamentally different from (and better than) city and county libraries where the Director and in some cases a handful of others are "executive management" and the library service managers are "middle management" whose interests are assumed to be different.  We're not.

One of the things that I love most about what we have built at PVLD is the sense of "one team" across our three libraries, between the Board and staff, between PVLD and the Friends, and across department boundaries.  It's not perfect, and frictions and disagreements do emerge, but we have come so far together.  This is the first time in 5 1/2 years that something has come up that I feel truly threatens that achievement, and it is literally making me sick.

It is also something that I can do little to nothing about.  Those who know me know that I am always looking for how we can address issues and move forward, and so not being able to "fix" this situation is very uncomfortable.

I'm going to need some time to think about whether I have the will, the desire, and the strength to push forward in an this environment, and whether I am prepared to accept the restrictions on my leadership behavior.  I love this community and this staff, but I know from past experience painfully gained that I do not want to work in an environment of "us and them."  If I can't figure out how to move this boulder, I may be the one who needs to move.

I certainly have no intention of not honoring my employment contract with PVLD, but for the first time since I came here I am seriously thinking about my options once it comes to an end.

With that sobering thought I am looking forward getting out of the water for a few days as I visit family next week and rest and reflect.  Keep me in your thoughts.

Wishful thinking

I've been working very hard to share as much information as possible about the financial pressures we face, and the options I think we have to address them, with PVLD employees, other stakeholders, and the community.  At the same time I've been trying to maintain and portray a positive and optimistic outlook in the face of these very trying times. 

Upon reflection I realized that the model I've been using is one I learned from my several mentors who have a military leadership background, and that is exemplified in this video of Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore, who wrote We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (as an aside, I found the video on Michael Hyatt's blog after Googling "leadership and accountability"...you can see what's on my mind!)

As you can see from the video, one of the key elements of this model of leadership is the need for the leader to inspire confidence and a determination to prevail despite the odds.

The problem, as I've painfully learned over the past couple of days, is that efforts to inspire confidence can have the unintended consequence of shielding people in the organization from the harsh reality of a situation which in turn can lead to wishful thinking that is disconnected from that reality.  My guess is that on an actual battlefield this is not the issue it can be in a non-combat situation....when bullets are flying and bodies are falling the reality of the situation is pretty clear to everyone, and the leader's efforts to inspire confidence are clearly understood to be within that reality.

Here at PVLD I think many people have not yet come to grips with the difficult situation we are in, and I worry that my attempts to put a positive face on things have contributed.  While I want to be positive, I also want to be honest, so here are some of the "wishful thoughts" I am hearing and my take on the actual situation.

Wishful thought #1 - If we can only avoid the borrowing of our property taxes under Proposition 1a we'll be fine

Reality - The 2009/2010 budget adopted by the Board of Trustees (without any Proposition 1a impacts) is barely balanced.  We do not meet our reserve policy requirements, and we do not fully fund our upcoming capital maintenance needs.  We only achieved this results by making significant cuts to services and by asking the Friends of the Library to double their level of support.  The 09/10 budget reflects a 1% growth in revenue but a 1.4% growth in expenses compared to this fiscal year, with the "salaries and related" expenses that comprise over 71% of the budget growing at twice the rate of our revenue.

Furthermore, if our estimates of our property tax revenue for 08/09 prove to be off  when we get our final numbers in August (e.g. because of increased defaults), we could start 2009/2010 with less money than we thought and move into a deficit situation.  The projection for 2010/2011 shows a further deficit of as much as $175,000 in the operating budget, with no money available for capital maintenance needs.

We need to continue to find ways to cut expenses, and it is hard to see how we can achieve the savings we need without reining in salary and related expenses.

Wishful thought #2- We need to continue to cut services instead of affecting employee compensation.

Reality - We have already made cuts that have a significant impact on our customers.  We've eliminated databases, cut the budget for books/movies/audiobooks etc by 20%, increased fees, and next year the library will be open 250 hours fewer than it was this year.  Some of these changes actually benefit staff or reduce workload (e.g librarians get off work at 8 instead of 9, fewer purchases means less cataloging and processing).  It is not reasonable to expect the community to continue to bear the brunt of the financial situation.

Also, service cuts that don't deliver real cost savings don't help much.  For example, further cuts to library hours only make sense if we also cut salary and related costs proportionally, which means salary cuts.  We can continue to cut the materials budget, but at some point the associated reduction in staff workload also needs to be addressed.

Wishful thought #3 - We serve an affluent community, surely they can afford to provide more support

Reality - This community is more diverse and less generally affluent than it seems.  Many families, including some on our own staff, are stretching their resources to the limit inorder to live here and take advantage of the excellent schools.  The population is also aging, and a large number of residents are people who bought their homes back in the 60s and 70s when prices were low, retired from not-particularly high-paying jobs, and now live on modest pensions, Social Security payments that will not be increased for the first time in decades, and investments that are very much depleted.

Our community is also not unaffected by the general economic circumstances.  10% of all Californians are unemployed and that includes many of our residents.  Many residents own businesses that are struggling or even failing. Many have seen the value of their homes, the money they have saved for their children's college educations, and their retirement funds decline significantly.  Many of those who remain employed are losing employer funding of their retirement plans, paying substantially more for their medical benefits than we do, being furloughed, or experiencing pay cuts.  Is it realistic, or even fair, to ask them to suchion us from experiencing any financial impact?

Plus, residents already support the library financially at a much higher level than do most other communities.  Our local public revenue per capita is nearly three times the California average, which allows us to have a staff to population served ratio much larger than that of other communities. We also charge fees for services that in many other communities are free such as movie, audiobook, and video game rentals.  In addition, our hardworking Friends of the Library group will be providing an astounding 6% of our funding next year, and over 200 community volunteers give over 27,000 hours of their time each year.

That is an amazing level of support, and I don't think we can reasonably ask for much more in the short term.

Wishful thought #4 - We have money in the Gift Fund, and the Friends have money in their reserves.  Let's just use that to get us through the crisis.

Reality - Both the Gift Fund balance and the Friends reserves were accumulated over many years and are there not only to help in the event of a rainy day (and we all agree that it is raining!) but to support the long-term needs of the District to expand and enhance facilities, technology, and services.  This coming year we are already drawing on both reserves - as already mentioned the Friends are doubling their level of support, and we are drawing on Gift Fund monies in 09/10 for some of our Strategic Plan initiatives as well as for some of our capital maintenance needs.

Furthermore, according to a report on the radio this morning, California is experiencing the worst recession since the Great Depression and we are unlikely to see any significant improvement in the economy until the end of 2010.  Property values are likely to decline further, and to remain stagnant for years so we can't count on any increases to our core revenue source for a long time. If we spend all of our "rainy day" funds this year and next we could be in real trouble down the road.

Depressing as they are, these are the realities of our situation.  That is why I keep saying that I am trying to find ways to keep as many options open as possible, so we are not backed into a corner where we have to inflict a lot of pain on employees or the community.  I also want to find solutions that "share the pain" rather than having a disproportionate impact on the community vs employees, or on one group of employees over another.  I am already concerned that the cuts we have made so far are directly impacting the pay of our part-time hourly employees, many of whom rely on their modest incomes to pay for medical care, go to school, or supplement small retirement incomes.

On the positive side we have managed to get this far without experiencing the pain many in other libraries and other communities are already feeling.  We also have an amazing staff who I know can and will pull together to help us get through the next few rough years and continue to provide the levels of service that will sustain our community and secure their continued support...but this is only possible if we have a shared understanding of the reality of the situation.

Delicious ambiguity

These are uncertain times for everyone, and we here at PVLD are feeling our share of anxiety as we see our revenues deteriorate and wait to hear whether the State will borrow our property tax revenues.  There are many unknowns about the future, and at the same time we need to make decisions based on some kind of assumption about what the future will hold. 

Even little things become big things in this environment.  For example, employees need to make their benefits elections for the fiscal year starting July 1st.  Normally this isn't such a big deal, but this year we don't yet know what the benefits allowance will be because that is subject to union negotiations that are just starting today.  Why are we just starting to talk to the union today?  Because the union officials are busy dealing with similar issues in every organization across the State, and even though we requested a meeting several weeks ago this is the earliest they could make it happen.  The result - added stress for everyone.

The stress that all of the uncertainty about our PVLD budget is having on employees has been weighing heavily on me, but there is little I can do to alleviate it other than try to keep everyone as informed as possible.

Then, over the past couple of weeks, I've had some reminders that life itself is uncertain and you never know when something will happen that will change your life in an instant in ways far more profound than not knowing how much money you will have to apply towards your benefits or whether you will get a pay increase.  A friend's daughter is seriously injured in a tragic accident and now faces weeks and months of rehabilitation; you learn that not one but two childhood friends have terminal brain cancer; you face a health scare, as do several friends and colleagues...and you are reminded that despite our almost overwhelming human desire to have all the answers, life itself is uncertain.

With this thought on my mind, I came across this quote from Gilda Radner who knew as well as anyone how your life can change in an instant -

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

I'm not sure I yet have the wisdom to embrace ambiguity as "delicious", but I'm trying to learn to at least accept it.  Time will tell how successful I am...