Dallas residents will have to wait a little longer to find out what the future of the Dallas Public Library system looks like, Director Manya Shorr told City Council members Monday. 

The Friends of the Dallas Public Library recently conducted a survey in collaboration with the Dallas Public Library as the department considers potential branch closures amid citywide budgetary constraints. Over 4,000 residents responded, and now the library department wants more time before updating the committee with new recommendations, Shorr told members of the council’s Quality of Life, Arts and Culture Committee.

In January, Shorr recommended to the committee that the Renner Frankford, Skyline, Oak Lawn and Arcadia Park branch libraries be closed as part of a planned shift to a regional model. A regional model would call for a handful of libraries open daily with extended hours to supplement or supplant smaller neighborhood locations. Closing the branches, Shorr said, will help the system make the $2.6 million in cuts it’s been asked to identify ahead of the city’s budgetary cycle.

Council members aired concerns about the closures and called for greater public engagement at the meeting, prompting DPL staff to collaborate with the friends’ group on the survey, which was open from Feb. 13-26. The results were published last week, with the Friends of the Dallas Public Library reporting 72% of 4,038 respondents opposed to the plan to close the four branches.

Staff will take additional time to synthesize the results along with input gathered from emails and budget meetings before presenting updated recommendations in late April. Council members are holding town hall meetings this week to engage citizens on budget priorities, with a full council briefing on the budget scheduled for April 1. The Quality of Life, Arts and Culture Committee will then meet in late April, when Shorr will present updated recommendations. Shorr did not return a request for comment.

The $2.6 million in cuts requested of the library department reflects what is expected to be a difficult budgetary cycle. Dallas officials will have to spend more than $220 million to help stabilize the city’s tumultuous Police and Fire Pension this year. Council members have already voted to close one branch library in 2025; there is an ongoing debate over the $1 billion plus bill to repair City Hall, and neighborhood pools are facing closure. To top it all off, city staff recently reported sales tax revenues $5 million short of prior projections.

“If we do not move to a regional model and close four libraries, I will have to reduce hours and days for every library in this city, which is what we have done eight times over the last 15 years in response to budget pressures,” Shorr told council members at the January meeting.

“Loving Libraries Loudly”

Still, around 97% of respondents surveyed said they support maintaining or increasing the library system’s budget, which has remained largely unchanged since pre-2008 funding levels, said Friends of the Dallas Public Library Executive Director Denise McGovern.

“Dallas in 2008 is, very much, not the same Dallas,” McGovern said. “We value big ideas in Dallas. We value creativity, we value business, and just this sort of very much can-do spirit of what happens. And to me, that comes with a very curious, very interesting, very thoughtful and trained workforce. The companies that we’re bringing into Dallas  want people who are going to stay, people who are going to want their quality of life here to be great, and that comes with libraries, quite honestly.”

For the survey, the FoDPL contracted with Probolsky Research, a national polling and public opinion research firm. Residents were encouraged to respond with social media campaigns, e-mail newsletters and physical advertisements at local branches. 

Roughly 71.5% of respondents identified as female, and just under two-thirds of those surveyed reported no children in their household. The majority, approximately 70%, held undergraduate or postgraduate degrees, with residents aged 65 and over making up the largest proportion of survey respondents.

“People value their libraries tremendously; they would like to see the libraries funded through the city, and hopefully funded more than they are right now in the city,” McGovern said. “Lots of uses, everything from just books or ebooks to community time to programming. And that was really what the idea of the survey was, was to provide the community with an opportunity to share their library stories.”

The survey found that more than 80% of the 4,000-plus respondents visited the library at least once a month, with the most common uses being book or DVD borrowing, e-books or other online resources, community events and study space. Far more than anything else, the majority (64.5%) said that access to books, information, and learning was the most important role libraries serve.

More respondents regularly use the Renner-Frankford Branch (13.4%) than any other library, according to survey data. The Oak Lawn Branch reported the second-highest number of users among those surveyed. Oak Lawn contains a significant collection of LGBTQ literature and has been defended as a crucial community space, with council member Paul Ridley calling it “important to this community, particularly to the LGBTQ population,” at the January committee meeting.

“They [libraries] need to be a priority by the city in order to continue to have them grow and match what the city of Dallas needs as it continues to grow and mature, so the positive feedback we receive from the survey shows us that people do care about that,” McGovern said.

According to a presentation delivered by Shorr at the January meeting, roughly 88% of Dallas residents would still be within a 15-minute drive of a library under a regional model with five flagship locations and four fewer neighborhood branches. A slight majority (41% willing, 39% opposed and 15% neutral) of respondents said they would be willing to commute to a flagship location if their neighborhood branch closed, while 72% said they would travel 15 minutes or less to reach a library they use regularly.

The Short and Long Term

Even if library branches remain open this year, there has been discussion about the future of community-based offerings and programming. Shorr expressed interest in providing services in retail areas, recreation centers and other non-traditional venues at the January meeting, to which Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Gay Donnell Willis pointed to the Bookmarks storefront in NorthPark Center as a potential precedent.

McGovern said while the friends’ group is open to new ideas, they can’t support any closures, and further cuts will only hamper innovation.

“You really can’t take that time to look at what could be new and different and useful and efficient and wonderful if you’re constantly working on doing more with less, and you’re always being, which is where I go back to that $2.6 million, not having to scale back so much all the time. It’s worth the investment. It really is worth the investment. Let’s give the library team time to find those really cool things that can happen.”

Council members’ budget town hall meetings are open to all residents and can be attended virtually or in-person throughout the week. Further information on the cities’ upcoming budgets will be provided at the April 1 council meeting.

McGovern said she encourages respondents to “love their libraries” loudly and continue making their voice heard before council members receive updated recommendations on potential closures on April 20.

“Each of the council districts and each of the libraries represents very different parts of Dallas. There’s not a one-size-fits-all for everything, and they need to hear specifically from their constituents and from people who know the system, why the library matters, and that is really it,” McGovern said.