Join Our Coalition

If you or a group you belong to would like to join the Save the DPL Coalition, contact us at FriendsOfTheBowenLibrary@protonmail.com and we will send you our sign-on letter (also found below), which outlines the issues we are fighting against, and our policy demands. When we approach state legislators to ask for their vote to defend our libraries when certain legislation comes up, or to change PA 57, we will also show them our list of supporters. By joining our coalition, you are telling state officials that you stand with us in the belief that Detroit's libraries should be free from financial looting, and attempts at city takeover.

OUR COALITION (so far):

Atkinson Ave. Improvement Dist.

Moratorium Now! Coalition

Hydrate Detroit

Russ Bellant, Detroit Library Commissioner (ret.)

Original United Citizens of Southwest Detroit 

Hubbard Farms Neighborhood Assoc. 

We Care About 7 Mile-VanDyke

Helco Block Club

General Baker Institute

Core City Strong 

Southwest Detroit Community Benefits Coalition

Elena Herrada, Adjunct Instructor Wayne County Community College

Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (ret.)

West Outer Drive Civic Association

Garage Cultural

Michigan Welfare Rights Organization

Julie Herrada, University of Michigan Library

The Community Action Committee of the Detroit Catholic Pastoral Council

Dr. John Telford, Detroit Public Schools Superintendent (ret.), DPSCD Poet-in-Residence

Latino Leaders for the Enhancement of Advocacy and Development (LLEAD)

Cinema Detroit

Detroit Chapter of the National Action Network

Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision

College Park Community Association

Detroit People's Platform

MovenPictures Artist Collective

Michigan Poor People’s Campaign

Detroit is Different, Inc.

Unity in Our Community Timebank

Greenacres-Woodward Civic Association

OUR SIGN-ON LETTER:

Dear Potential Ally,

We, the Save The DPL Coalition, and the Friends of the Bowen Branch Library are writing to inform you of a dire situation in our city. The Detroit Public Library currently faces extraordinary threats to its future, ranging from a political takeover of its governing structure, to unjust drains on its finances—both legalized and criminal. We are sending this letter across the city in order to ask various organizations to join our coalition to oppose these threats.

In April of 2022, Detroit City Councilman Scott Benson suggested the takeover of the Detroit Library Commission by requesting a resolution from the state legislature that the power of appointment to that board be switched from the Detroit school board to the City of Detroit.[1] The current arrangement has worked since 1881,[2] and kept the library isolated from political influence and pressure. Benson justified his proposal by citing falsehoods about the library’s organizational and financial structure that appeared to be deliberate misinformation, and he failed to offer any theoretical improvements that such a change might represent to constituents. The falsehoods that he employed in his argument included:

• The DPL's financial future was unstable, and that it was about to fail 
• That the DPL gets its budget from city funds 
• That his resolution only sought to take over appointment power for some DPL Commission seats 

Just like its governance, the finances of the Detroit Public Library (DPL) are also completely separate from those of the city,[3] although the DPL does not have direct administration over its financial accounts (it must send expenditure requests to the City of Detroit Finance Dept. to implement). The DPL receives 89% of its revenue from a millage that voters approved in 2014 as “Proposal L.” The remaining 11% of the budget is funded by grants, fundraisers, revenues from library assets, applicable penal fines, shared taxes, state aid as a sole member of the Detroit Library Cooperative, and federal aid through the Library Services and Technology Act.[4] There are also minor additional revenues collected through a state grant for serving Highland Park, and state reimbursement for revenue lost to DPL from Neighborhood Enterprise Zones.[5] Even with all these revenue streams the DPL’s budget is still only $30M per year. Yet the library system has consistently managed to remain solvent—despite unfair external drains on its finances such as tax captures. In fact even during the bankruptcy of the City of Detroit and the Detroit Public Schools, the DPL remained solvent—because of its independence from them.

The Downtown Development Authority (DDA), appointed and chaired by Mayor Duggan, is a body that through state law is granted the power to take money directly from taxpayers and millage-funded entities, and apply it to private development projects downtown.[6] This is called “tax capture,” and DDAs in cities across Michigan can do it to help revitalize their downtowns. According to that law, libraries are supposed to be exempt from tax captures, but Detroit is the only city in Michigan where libraries are subjected to tax captures.[7] Further, other Michigan DDAs 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,[8] and they are projected to climb even higher.

The city already takes $1.2M from the DPL’s funds for “administrative fees,” and they have refused to document what it is specifically used for despite requests from the DPL and its auditors. When added to the planned future tax captures, the city will be taking a total of between $5.5M and $6M per year out of the DPL’s $30M budget.[9]

This has caused undeniable and demonstrable harm to the DPL’s ability to serve the public. Primarily, there is deferred maintenance, as well as more recent flood damage issues in DPL buildings city-wide, and in fact there are still six out of the 21 total branch libraries that have not yet reopened from the pandemic. The revenue losses represented by these tax captures directly subtract from the DPL’s ability to address these issues, even though the only library that falls within the geographical boundaries of the DDA’s jurisdiction is the Skillman (Downtown) Branch. Furthermore, exceeding a 5% tax capture limit is an illegal violation of the language of Proposal L, as approved by voters in 2014.[10]

Moreover, it was recently reported that two City of Detroit employees in the Finance Department committed wire fraud involving $685,221 of the library’s budget.[11] The accused were fired but not prosecuted, and the incident is supposedly under investigation. We believe this act of corruption, as well as the financial damage caused by the tax captures will be used as a pivot to justify a governance takeover of the DPL.

Meanwhile, it is important to acknowledge that the Detroit Public Schools do not have school libraries or 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 archives 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. We have noted that recent discussions between City Council committee members (not just Scott Benson), as well as representatives of their Legislative Policy Division leading up to official votes on library items have contained an alarming amount of inaccurate information, despite having the correct information readily available to them. This illustrates that the current city officials are not suited to take over operation of the DPL.

In order to address the above issues and injustices, the Save The DPL Coalition propose the following remedies:

• State legislators pass SB-1086, a bill introduced by Senator Sylvia Santana in June 2022. It was designed to remove the Detroit exception to the tax capture law, by modifying Michigan Public Act 57 of 2018 to make it so that Detroit's libraries are protected from tax captures, just like every other library in the state.[12] Sen. Santana has indicated that she will reintroduce the bill this session. 
• Detroit City Council compel the DDA to repay to the library the amounts that they have illegally captured since FY2015. The ballot language of the current library millage (as overwhelmingly approved by voters) set a 5% cap on the amount that may be captured from it; the DDA takes three times that much. 
• The eventual abolition of tax captures at the state level. 
• The wire fraud involving DPL funds in 2021 must be investigated. 
• The school board's selection process for appointing DPL Commissioners be made fully transparent. 
• The services of all our branch libraries be restored to full capacity. We want to see the return of BOOKS to their sparse shelves, especially new books from local authors. We want the branch libraries’ deferred maintenance issues addressed, and the physical structures to see routine maintenance again, done in accordance with historic preservation standards. We want trained staff, who are well paid, to fill all vacant positions. 
• The DDA be immediately compelled to use some of its captured funds on the Skillman Branch Library to cover whatever improvements or repairs it may need, since it falls within the DDA’s jurisdiction and has been involuntarily closed for the duration of Dan Gilbert’s DDA-funded construction project. 
• Detroit Public Library must remain public, and its commission remain separate from city government; free from influence, political pressure, or corporate control. 

It bears mentioning that the Michigan Legislature has exempted other millage-funded institutions such as the Detroit Zoo and Detroit Institute of Arts from tax captures. The Detroit Public Library deserves the same protections, especially considering that every other public library in the state enjoys exemption from tax capture.

We urge you to join us in our fight to protect our DPL and the many invaluable services that it provides to the people of Detroit and beyond, by signing on to our coalition and adding your organization’s name to this letter of appeal. With your help we can preserve this historic institution and ensure that it is allowed to govern itself free of political interference, secure in its rightful and essential financial resources.

Please respond as soon as possible, as this fight is advancing swiftly. Simply state that you agree to sign-on to our coalition and we will include your group’s name in our appeals to state lawmakers. Upon request we can also arrange to give a brief in-person or virtual presentation to the membership of your organization, if desired. If you know of any other organizations we should reach out to, please let us know.

Thank you,
Friends of the Bowen Branch Library

Respond to:
FriendsOfTheBowenLibrary@protonmail.com




References:

[1] City Council meeting minutes of April 26, 2022 (1:58:07 on video) and May 12, 2022 (39:50 on video). See also: Memorandum from Councilman Benson’s office to David Whitaker dated March 31, 2022, Re: Detroit Public Library Governance Resolution

[2] Michigan Local Act 314 of 1881; see appendixes to: https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2021-04/Library%20Relationship%20Report.pdf

[3] Michigan Local Acts 359 of 1901, 390 of 1903, and 460 of 1905; see appendixes to: https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2021-04/Library%20Relationship%20Report.pdf

[4] https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2021-04/Library%20Relationship%20Report.pdf

[5] Explanation from DPL Commissioner Russ Bellant, February 5, 2023

[6] An explanation of Michigan's tax capture laws: https://www.michigandowntowns.com/tax_increment_financing.php

[7] PA 57 of 2018: http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?mcl-Act-57-of-2018

[8] https://www.bridgedetroit.com/etroit-public-library/ and https://law.wayne.edu/news/reprehensible-detroit-public-library-outraged-over-amount-of-millage-money-going-to-city-41983

[9] Explanation from former DPL Commissioner Russ Bellant, February 5, 2023

[10] Language of ballot initiative “Proposal L” of 2014

[11] https://www.bridgedetroit.com/etroit-public-library/

[12] Info on SB-1068: http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?2022-SB-1086 Full text: https://trackbill.com/bill/michigan-senate-bill-1086-economic-development-tax-increment-financing-tax-capture-districts-exempt-public-libraries-amends-secs-203-303-404-618-715-amp-814-of-2018-pa-57-mcl-125-4203-et-seq/2264021/