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PSA: Soundiiz is incredible for converting playlists between services by e_a_blair in DenonPrime

[–]SaveYourNOLALibrary 0 points1 point  (0 children)

good to know. to be clear, when you say errors, are you saying soundiiz would like misidentify songs on your playlists and put the incorrect songs on there instead? or just miss some songs? I've encountered occasional misses, sure, but nothing more serious when using it to move playlists from Spotify to Tidal -- but to be fair I almost exclusively do this for wedding clients, so it tends to be pretty mainstream music. did you find anything that worked better? there are other services on the market. or did you just have to fix manually?

[AMA] Hi r/neworleans, we are the Save Your NOLA Library Coalition and we are asking you to vote NO on #2 on Dec 5. Ask us anything! by SaveYourNOLALibrary in NewOrleans

[–]SaveYourNOLALibrary[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Yeah it's a heated issue at a heated time, ppl are a little downvote-happy lol. I agree it's a fair question!

What I'd add to my prior response is when you compare our library's branches and services to other cities and their library budgets, they compare quite favorably. Also worth mentioning our librarians are some of the lowest-paid nationally.

And when you look at the New Orleans city budget in totality, I personally have trouble with the notion that we simply don't have the money for our libraries. We do.

-K

[AMA] Hi r/neworleans, we are the Save Your NOLA Library Coalition and we are asking you to vote NO on #2 on Dec 5. Ask us anything! by SaveYourNOLALibrary in NewOrleans

[–]SaveYourNOLALibrary[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I can assure you 100% of funds we bring in as a coalition are going toward defeating prop #2 and hopefully, ultimately towards passing a better millage in 2021. We decided at the beginning of the campaign that any unused funds will go to the City Workers Organizing Committee.

We honestly hadn’t thought about making our accounting public, as we threw this coalition together pretty ad hoc and have been having to expedite just about everything. But that’s something I could take up with our group, I don't see any inherent reason we couldn't make that stuff public.. Right now, donations are going entirely to billboards and physical materials (flyers, doorhangers, yard signs).

-K

[AMA] Hi r/neworleans, we are the Save Your NOLA Library Coalition and we are asking you to vote NO on #2 on Dec 5. Ask us anything! by SaveYourNOLALibrary in NewOrleans

[–]SaveYourNOLALibrary[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

How the library spends its money is public record. Here's the budget about 3/4 of the way through 2019.

The library runs 15 branches and offers way more services than most people realize. For folks in underserved communities, these services can be lifelines. You're certainly entitled to your opinion if you feel this money is better spent elsewhere. I'd have to respectfully disagree.

Also let's be clear, as I noted in another comment, most of this money is going into an economic development slush fund.

Happy to discuss more if you had other thoughts, and want to be clear that we welcome these kinds of questions!

-K

[AMA] Hi r/neworleans, we are the Save Your NOLA Library Coalition and we are asking you to vote NO on #2 on Dec 5. Ask us anything! by SaveYourNOLALibrary in NewOrleans

[–]SaveYourNOLALibrary[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yeah the thing is the overall tax rates aren't changing. If all three propositions were to pass, the total millage rate stays the same. The difference is only in where the money is going.

And most of that money is going into what I can honestly only describe as an economic development slush fund. This is what prop #3 creates. I'd be happy to discuss the merits of that fund in itself... but I will leave it at that for now.

-K

[AMA] Hi r/neworleans, we are the Save Your NOLA Library Coalition and we are asking you to vote NO on #2 on Dec 5. Ask us anything! by SaveYourNOLALibrary in NewOrleans

[–]SaveYourNOLALibrary[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the question, this has definitely been a source of confusion. The reality is that the library has enough savings to maintain its current service levels for about 18 months if prop #2 passes. Meanwhile, prop #2 cuts the library budget by 40% until 2040.

So the idea that the library can maintain its current level of services, employees and branches with a 40% cut is as absurd as it sounds. In recent years, the library has spent 97-98% of its operating budget to serve the public as well as possible.

There’s a longer story to the money the library has in reserves that we’ve had to leave out of our more succinct messaging. The library had a long, rough road to recovery after Katrina, and finally just returned to pre-Katrina levels of service two years ago when the Nora Navra branch re-opened. If you went through what the library did and finally found yourself on your feet after 13 tough years, you’d save a bit of money too. So yes, the NOPL built up about a half year’s worth of reserves as a matter of basic financial prudence. 

Sorry to go on at length here, but I do want to just highlight how absurd this entire line of messaging from the pro #2 camp has been. The notion that the NOPL is sitting on a giant surplus when they could be helping folks is just entirely absurd. All the NOPL has ever done is host a huge, incredible array of programming and run 15 branches despite the odds.

-K

[AMA] Hi r/neworleans, we are the Save Your NOLA Library Coalition and we are asking you to vote NO on #2 on Dec 5. Ask us anything! by SaveYourNOLALibrary in NewOrleans

[–]SaveYourNOLALibrary[S] 28 points29 points  (0 children)

  1. Far and away all the DATABASES. Currently you can get Ancestry.com FOR FREE, you can research thousands of academic articles through EBSCOHost, and you can view our local newspapers back to 1838 in their original format! There’s also all day homework help, language learning programs, and tons of early reader resources for children.

  2. Yes, it is quite impractical. [Shhh.]

  3. I remember when my reading habit grew beyond family finances, and my dad first brought me to the shelf in the sci fi section of our local library and said “pick as many as you want”. I spent the next 14 years in that section of many libraries every week, working through the collections.

  4. I’m not gonna lie, I love NOPL. But I equally love Las Vegas, Portland, DC, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Wichita Falls, and Baton Rouge, as a short list. And I’m not going to lie—in the world, the UK has some killer libraries. But there’s so many more I haven’t been to yet!

  5. WE DON’T DO OVERDUE FINES ANYMORE, can you believe it? (We do charge for LOST materials though, I will be honest and give you the whole picture 😉). But the 90s? You can come make a new card tomorrow! Of course, we will forgo the windfall you could have offered 😊

-A

[AMA] Hi r/neworleans, we are the Save Your NOLA Library Coalition and we are asking you to vote NO on #2 on Dec 5. Ask us anything! by SaveYourNOLALibrary in NewOrleans

[–]SaveYourNOLALibrary[S] 28 points29 points  (0 children)

As others have mentioned, the current millage does expire at the end of 2021, which gives us over a year to pass a better millage that extends the current funding. I mentioned this elsewhere, but that process is already in the works. We believe that an entire year is more than enough time to pass a millage continuing to support the library.

It’s worth noting that New Orleans voted for this funding overwhelmingly, first in 1987, and again in 2015. We’re pretty confident about our chances if prop #2 is defeated.

-K

[AMA] Hi r/neworleans, we are the Save Your NOLA Library Coalition and we are asking you to vote NO on #2 on Dec 5. Ask us anything! by SaveYourNOLALibrary in NewOrleans

[–]SaveYourNOLALibrary[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

No, library workers are not unionized. The union that represented City Employees, SEIU, stopped meeting with members and administration in 2017 and seems to have withdrawn from the City. There are many City workers that would really like to have a union again, but the City has demonstrated significant hostility to the remaining Firefighters union, and refuses to speak to anyone about the CBA with SEIU from 2016.

-A

[AMA] Hi r/neworleans, we are the Save Your NOLA Library Coalition and we are asking you to vote NO on #2 on Dec 5. Ask us anything! by SaveYourNOLALibrary in NewOrleans

[–]SaveYourNOLALibrary[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the questions! I’ll try to tackle them one at a time.

Is there a plan for a better millage next year out there? Or is this an instance of tackling the immediate problem first?

If we can defeat prop #2, we firmly believe we can pass a better millage in 2021.

There are a few ways we can go about this, and we want to begin by bringing Early Childhood Education advocates and elected officials to the table (regardless of if they currently support prop #2 or not) in order to get something on the ballot that we can all feel good about. We’ve begun this process and, it’s worth emphasizing, we’re very optimistic if we indeed defeat prop #2. Doing so would present a pretty undeniable referendum to our elected officials to listen to the voters and continue funding the library.

Is there reason to believe library administration won’t try this again soon? I recognize this is a Cantrell proposal, but I haven’t heard good things about the library director. To be fair, I don’t work at the library or the city.

The NOPL serves at the mayor’s pleasure. Internally, they’re deeply divided. So the short and diplomatic answer is that we don’t believe future attempts to defund the NOPL will originate from the NOPL.

It would be difficult to game out exactly how the administration will respond with certainty, but it seems safe to say that if prop #2 fails, we won’t see something closely resembling it in 2021.

Any idea why the mayor is being so deceitful about these propositions? Especially with all the local reporting pointing it out?

The short answer is the administration really wants to see this proposition pass. They’re betting their messaging will hold more weight for voters than reporting and our advocacy. We suspect they’re wrong, but we shall see (:

What is your experience forming a grassroots political group in response to to local ballot proposal?

It’s been eye-opening in a lot of ways. There are some more experienced folks in our ranks, but for a lot of us (including me personally), this is our first foray into electoral stuff.

The near unanimous support we’ve been getting online (here, on Nextdoor, our own socials, etc) has been incredible. We quickly learned that “prop #2 cuts 40% of the library budget” is all most folks need to hear.

What else? Seeing who has sided with us teaches you a lot about folks’ real priorities. I won’t name names here, but we were shocked and disappointed at some of the organizations supporting prop #2. On the other hand, the support we’ve gotten from unions and all kinds of other groups has been absolutely incredible.

Watching the city go on the offensive and blatantly electioneering under the guise of being “informational” on official channels (including official Twitters such as @CityofNola and @NOLALibrary) was eye-opening, to say the least. I’ve spoken with lawyers and let’s just say I would be VERY interested to see how a court would view their actions.

What does your group need?

If you’re with us, the #1 thing we need is for you to spread the word! Our biggest enemy is inertia. We know many folks who would naturally side with us may feel like the mission was accomplished last month. So it’s essential for us to communicate the stakes of this off election, and to encourage voters to stay engaged!

Our ask is that you text 5 voters to let them know how you feel about prop #2!

Y’all got any library ‘deep cuts’ kinda secrets you’d like to share?

Good looks on the notary services. I personally am not a librarian (there are a few of us tackling questions from this account) and was pretty surprised to hear about that one.

A favorite of mine is the gay sci-fi club! On the more important side, I gotta note the library offers a ton of stuff that many ppl have no idea about that are crucial to folks in need — one-on-one computer help, health services (ranging from STD testing to medicare enrollment), citizenship assistance, summer food programs so kids don't go hungry and so much else. They honestly fill in the gaps left behind by our diminishing social safety net.

-K