3/7/24 Correction: AADL Board President Molly Kleinman resigned from the Ann Arbor Transportation Commission on February 28, 2024.

by P.D. Lesko

In the final years that former AADL Director Josie Parker captained the ship, Annual Reports led off with the number of “Registered Cardholders.” The final Annual Report Parker produced showed that the AADL had 174,775 registered cardholders. In 2022, Eli Neiberger was chosen to succeed Parker as the AADL Director and Neiberger’s 2022-2023 Annual Report showed that the AADL had a mere 58,971 registered cardholders. Was the pandemic to blame? How had AADL lost almost 120,000 registered cardholders in a single year? Neiberger’s answer was simple: Josie Parker’s Annual Reports had included “the total number of borrower records in the system, including cards that had expired.”

Neiberger explained, “In such a transient town, that was really never an accurate number of active library card holders. In 2021 we changed it to be the number of unexpired cards in the system, so it is now a much better measure of the number of cards that are actively using the library.” One could replace “better” with “more honest.” Eli Neiberger is staring into an industry that is rapidly changing, but a perpetual millage is staring back at him.

In a report published in 2021, veteran London-based bookseller, library advocate, and former Waterstones managing director Tim Coates warned that U.S. public library usage statistics show a steep decline—and he suggests that library leaders must do more to address the trend.

In an email, AADL Dir. Eli Neiberger discussed some of the challenges that face the Ann Arbor District Library.

Public Library Building Use Down 31 Percent Nationwide

Only seven percent of Americans report visiting libraries weekly, while 59 percent state that they seldom or never visit their local public library. These statistics do not differ, either, by the respondents’ age, income, racial or ethnic background, or neighborhood type (urban, suburban, rural, etc.).

A 2021 report published by Publishers Weekly revealed that, “In the U.S. there has been a fall of 31 percent in public library building use over eight years, up to 2018.”

Tim Coates is a veteran London-based bookseller, library advocate, and former Waterstones Coates director. Coates says, “Continuous declines of this nature,” which includes drops in both door counts and physical circulation, “show that the public library service ignores the figures it does have and does not strive to find the figures it should have.”

Eli Neiberger’s 2022-2023 Annual Report, while important, in not showing data year-over-year offers up the figures it does have but, in effect, keeps important usage data from taxpayers that they need to see.

In the U.S., the majority of city libraries rely on corporate sponsorships, fundraising, state and federal funds to keep their doors open. In Ann Arbor, there is a perpetual 2 mill tax that supports the Ann Arbor District Library. The tax raises between $16-$19 million annually, twice the average operating funds of similarly sized library systems in U.S. cities. Under Josie Parker, AADL expanded its footprint to include five branches: Main Library on Fifth Ave., Westgate, Mallett’s Creek, Pittsfield and Traverwood.

The newspaper tracked down AADL Annual Reports going back to 2018-2019 to get a fuller picture of the AADL’s usage and financial position.

AADL Ups and Downs

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In a 2021 article titled, “Libraries Are in Decline: Let’s Renew Them,” Dr. Abrams writes, “The data show that libraries are struggling and suggest that we should all work together to improve and make libraries more open and important to the lives of all Americans.”

The AADL is struggling, but has a perpetual source of funding through a millage that, most recently, brought in over $19.8 million from property taxes. If, like other public library systems, AADL relied on sponsorships, corporate support, grants, state and federal funding, Eli Neiberger’s ship would be on the rocks, financially. In fiscal 2022-2023, the AADL brought in only $710,885 from sources unrelated to property taxes.

AADL Director Neiberger doesn’t have academic credentials or training in library science or business. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Michigan in 1996 and, according to his bio., “played tuba in the Michigan Marching Band.” While he had 25 years of experience working at AADL, he was an unconventional (but obvious) pick for the top job. His pay tops $250,000, according to AADL tax returns.

Neiberger’s 2022-2023 Annual Report shows that AADL has 58,971 cardholders. That’s down from his 2021-2022 Annual Report that revealed the AADL had 74,996 registered cardholders.

According to AADL Director Neiberger, “As for overall circulation, most of our metrics have not yet returned to 2019 levels, and for some formats, they never will. This is mostly about Audio-visual circulation. Streaming has changed demand for optical disc-based media and we don’t expect it to recover. (LP circulation has returned to 2019 levels).”

In 2019, the AADL system logged a whopping 1,767,965 door counts. In 2023, door counts were 1,252,572, a 30 percent decline.

In the business world, this is called customer “churn” and a business can lose anywhere from 10-25 percent of customers annually.

AADL is not a business in the traditional sense of the word, but some realities associated with customer churn impact the AADL. According to Harvard Business Review, it costs more to bring in new customers than it does to keep existing consumers happy and coming back to your place of business. This is why MBA students are taught to “Regularly survey customers to learn what they like and don’t like about your company, and use the findings to help improve products and services to reduce customer churn. Train your employees on best practices in customer service and make sure you’re competitively pricing your goods and services.”

AADL circulation numbers have fallen significantly.

In 2019, the Annual Report revealed that users had checked out 6.4 million items. In 2023, users checked out 4.7 million items, a decrease of 25.5 percent. Both adults and teens are checking out fewer items. According to the AADL’s 2018-2019 Annual Report, teens checked out 2.1 million items and adults checked out 4.2 million items. According to the 2022-2023 Annual Report, teens checked out 1.64 million items and adults checked out 3.09 million items.

Eli Neiberger offered an explanation for the decreases, “Also, this report (2022-2023) does not include ebook and eaudiobook checkouts at all. That has been growing significantly and will become a permanent part of the report starting next year.”

While door counts and circulation are down, room reservations, and meeting room self-bookings have mushroomed. In the 2020-2021 Annual Report, meeting room self-bookings stood at 820 in number. In the 2022-2023 Annual Report, meeting room self-bookings grew to 4544 in number, a more than 500 percent increase year-over-year. A look at the 2019 Annual Report shows AADL reported 3,597 meeting room self-bookings; this puts into clearer focus the 2022-2023 increase in meeting room self-bookings.

Finances & Exploitation of Part-Time Workers

Like the city’s bus system that enjoys a perpetual millage, AADL’s revenue has gone nowhere but up since 2018, thanks to rising property values. According to the AADL’s 990 income tax returns, in 2018, revenue was $16.8 million and expenses were $14.8 million. Net assets stood at $34.1 million. In 2023, revenue was $19.8 million and expenses were $17.9 million. Net assets stand at almost $37 million.

Between 2018 and 2023, AADL reduced its workforce from 311 to 269, a 13.5 percent decline. The amount spent on salaries during this same period increased from $8.7 million to $11.2 million.

One of the most common complaints among AADL part-timers is that unlike full-time workers, part-time workers’ schedules vary from week-to-work, making it difficult to plan around work. The AADL union contract calls for full-time librarians to work no more than 40 hours per week and strictly limits the number of weekends and Sundays full-timers must work. This, then, encourages the hiring of part-timers.

When asked about the use of part-timers, Eli Neiberger said, “Other than management & HR, the entire AADL workforce is unionized through two MEA units. Part-time and full-time staff have the same pay scale in all pay grades. Many of our staff are only seeking part-time work, and as an organization that operates five locations 70 hours a week, part-time staff are critical for keeping evenings and weekends covered.”

While it might appear fair and equitable for the full-time and part-time AADL employees to have “the same pay scale in all pay grades,” the opposite is true when some benefits are not accrued equally and other benefits are withheld entirely.

This is the case with the Sept. 2023 multi-year contract negotiated by the Michigan Education Association AADL Library affiliate leaders and signed by George Przygodski, the Executive Dir. of the Michigan Education Association. The contract was also signed by Eli Neiberger and AADL Board President Scott Trudeau. The contract withholds benefits from part-time AADL staff who work 29.99 hours per week or less. Those benefits include generous health, dental, vision and retirement perks. To add insult to injury, the contract calls for full-time staffers who elect not to enroll in the AADL’s healthcare benefit plan to be paid $100 per month for the privilege of opting out.

In another section of the contract in which their own MEA affiliated union targets them for unequal representation, part-time AADL employees accrue only 50 percent of the sick time hours accrued by full-time staff.

The “equal pay/withhold benefits” contract clauses are a standard unequal representation move used by education labor unions such as a National Education Association (NEA) and their affiliates, including the MEA, to make part-time workers ineligible for benefits. Full-time workers, then, collect the largest slice of the employer’s funds allocated for compensation and benefits.

Such unequal representation and exploitative collective bargaining is also an incentive to employers to hire more part-time workers who, in turn, are employed less than 30 hours per week and, thus, are ineligible for most benefits. This allows the employer to save money.

Employer Eli Neiberger, understandably, signed the contract that saves his non-profit the cost of benefits and half the cost of sick leave hours accrued for part-time employees. The AADL Board of Directors that represents oversight, and the public, also approved the contract. Former AADL Board President Scott Trudeau voted for and signed a contract that exploits the system’s part-time employees. Trudeau is a former member of the Ann Arbor Planning Commission and has been vocal about his involvement in progressive politics. Likewise, current AADL Board President Molly Kleinman, who sat on the Ann Arbor Transportation Commission for many years, has been public about her dedication to progressive politics.

How, then, a multi-year contract that locks part-time AADL employees into unequal union representation, unequal protection and unequal compensation was approved by the Board members remains a mystery.

The City of Ann Arbor, likewise, uses the same exploitative practice of hiring hundreds of part-time employees (people who work part-time and full-time temporary jobs) to save money. While part-timers at AADL are represented by a union, part-time workers employed by the City of Ann Arbor are excluded from the AFSME local.

The other change that AADL made during the pandemic was to stop collecting fines for overdue materials. According to a library staffer at the Traverwood branch, this change hasn’t resulted in more users neglecting to return materials.

“The majority of checked out materials are returned on time,” said the part-time desk clerk. “It has been a pleasant surprise for the Library and our patrons.”

The last AADL income tax return that included fines as a source of revenue showed around $107,000 collected from patrons.

While AADL Annual Reports suggest Eli Neiberger should consider closing one or two branches, and AADL should stop collecting the maximum allowed by the perpetual millage, or voters should rethink the perpetual millage, and even with changing dynamics thanks to a pandemic and technology, Eli Neiberger is upbeat. “Overall, library metrics move slowly, and typically lag the societal changes that drive them. We still have patrons who tell us they are not yet comfortable returning to the library due to public health risk. So most of the change here is still pandemic factors at play, with increased adoption of streaming services among them.”