Welcome to the Save the Detroit Public Library Coalition


The Detroit Public Library is currently facing extraordinary threats to its future, ranging from a political takeover of its governing structure, to unjust looting of its finances. 

The Detroit Public Library has been losing $3-4 Million of their operational budget every year since 2016 because it is being siphoned off by the Downtown Development Authority (DDA), which is appointed and chaired by Mayor Duggan, using “tax captures.” That money is being redistributed to rich private developers like the Ilitch family and Dan Gilbert, with no restrictions on its use. Detroit is the only city in the State of Michigan where this is done to the libraries by force; every other library in Michigan is exempt from tax capture under state law. Furthermore, other DDAs in Michigan typically capture less than 5% from the budget of any millage-funded institution, but Detroit’s DDA has been capturing above 12% of the DPL’s budget in recent years, and they are projected to climb even higher in 2023. These tax captures have done undeniable harm to the DPL’s ability to serve the public. 

Our public libraries offer crucial resources, especially for low-income and unhoused Detroiters. They serve as community centers for literacy support, they offer workspace and financial literacy training, cultural programming, technology classes, free internet, story time for toddlers, after-school programs for teens, and computer classes for seniors. Libraries also serve as cooling centers during summer heat waves. We need to stop the loss of our money because we desperately need to repair and upgrade our neighborhood library branches. In fact there are still 6 branch libraries that have not yet reopened from the pandemic, out of the 21 total remaining branch libraries in the city (that haven't been abandoned or demolished). And some still need repairs from the floods in 2021.

It is important to acknowledge the Detroit Public Schools do not have school libraries nor librarians since state-appointed emergency managers dispensed with them over a decade ago. This lack hinders Detroit students and renders them far less equipped than their suburban counterparts. Additionally, Highland Park does not currently have a library, and its residents depend on Detroit's library system.

Finally, researchers from around Michigan, and around the world depend on the DPL’s Burton Historical Collection and National Automotive History Collection as primary repositories for archival work regarding the history of Detroit, and both have been closed for around two years. Protecting, and strengthening the DPL is absolutely critical to sustaining the public good in the Detroit area, and the current austerity-minded city politicians proposing to take it over cannot offer the level of stewardship currently offered by the long-lived staff with intimate knowledge of the library system’s vast collections.

This website is designed to give you more information and explanation on what is going on politically with the DPL, its board of commissioners, and the city government. Here is a list of the posts on this website that will educate you on the fight for the future of the Detroit Public Library:


Click here to TAKE ACTION

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What is the current status of the fight for the DPL?

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Here is a brief timeline of events related to the fight for the Detroit Public Library, in reverse chronological order, so that the latest news is at the top. September 5, 2023 As a member organization of the  Detroiters For Tax Justice , we unveiled shocking new data on the effects of tax captures before City Council and members of the press. Using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, we retrieved reports from the DEGC on how much money they have taken from each millage on our tax bill, for the years 2014-2022. We then compiled all of that data into a spreadsheet, and we also combined it with tallies of what that stolen money could have paid for had it not been tax captured.  For instance, the DEGC tax captured $23.5M from the Detroit Public Library millage since 2014; that money could have paid to restore and reopen both the Monteith and  Conely Branches, brought the Bowen Branch up to ADA compliance, ran the "Laptop-To-Go" program for nine years, paid the sala...
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Lies they tell about the Library

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Here is a list of misinformation that has been coming out of city officials regarding the nature of the Detroit Public Library and its current status. The reason I'm choosing to call these lies and not misconceptions or errors is because normally when a public official says something inaccurate as a result of being misinformed, they retract their statement once they have the correct information. The difference here is that there has been no detectable effort on the part of these officials to our knowledge to correct their false statements. Don't fall for this stuff! LIE #1: "The DPL is financially unsustainable, or failing." This one comes from Councilman Scott Benson. On April 26th and May 12th of 2022, Benson made arguments before the rest of City Council that governance of the DPL should be taken over by the city because it is "no longer sustainable," and stands "at a precipice" where it could "go dark in the next ten years." This is c...
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