The head of the Ottawa Public Library Foundation says the planned shutdown of the 10-year-old fundraising body – recently announced by the city’s library board – was all but guaranteed after the cancellation of its “flagship” goal of a new central library in downtown Ottawa.
The foundation was incorporated in 2002 to meet certain priorities, according to Hunter McGill, chairman of the foundation’s board. Apart from raising money for the library’s programs and services, a major goal was funding a new main branch that was slated to become an architectural landmark for Ottawa and a showpiece for the city’s library system.
McGill says the idea to dissolve originally came from the foundation itself after recognizing – soon after Mayor Jim Watson took office in December 2010 – that a new main branch was not going to happen in the near future.
Watson said at the time that budget pressures, including the costs expected from city’s planned light-rail transit project, as well as technological changes in society required Ottawa to rethink its planned $250-million expenditure on a new central library at the corner of Albert and Lyon streets.
“Over the last 10 years the priority assigned to the (main branch) project has moved down in the list of priorities in the City of Ottawa,” says McGill “And without that kind of focus for us and (a) flagship project, it becomes more difficult to raise money and more difficult to rationalize having a foundation.”
McGill says the foundation recently told the library board that the fundraising body was considering dissolving. Then, unexpectedly, the library announced publicly that the foundation was dissolving.
While the shutdown was not initially a certainty, McGill says the announcement makes it one.
“It looks pretty inevitable now, particularly if one concludes that perhaps the library feels it does not need a foundation anymore,” McGill says.
The closing of the foundation comes at a critical time for libraries across the country.
The library’s main branch at the corner of Metcalfe and Laurier is undergoing a $6-million repair to ensure that it can stay operational.
At a time when budgets are being tightened, France Bouthillier, an associate professor at the McGill School of Information Studies, says a foundation that focuses on fundraising should be the last place cutbacks should happen.
“For me there’s a contradiction,” says Bouthillier. “If there is less money in the municipal budget for libraries, I don’t see why they wouldn’t push more on fundraising.”
Howard Whittaker, the former chair of the foundation board, says that the library could use the foundation now.
“It strikes me as odd,” he says. “They’re moving towards a capital project; it strikes me as odd that they wouldn’t see the value of a foundation.”
The capital project he is referring to is the needed overhaul of the main branch.
With the foundation closing, there is still money that has to be dealt with. Whittaker says he thinks the money, roughly $900,000, will go to a community foundation, which would hold the money for the library to access.
Despite this, McGill is quick to point out that the foundation is still a strong supporter of the library.