Dallas is currently trying to remedy a 2025 budget that is short by tens of millions, and various city services have taken turns stepping up to the chopping block. Earlier this month, community backlash to the proposed closing of nine neighborhood pools may have saved the aquatic facilities’ fate, and now Maggie Watson is hoping to rally the same support for her neighborhood library.
The Skillman Southwestern Branch Library in Northeast Dallas has been recommended for closure and could help save the city nearly $500,000 a year. A petition protesting the closure proposal has been signed over 1,600 times, and Watson plans to send it to the city council to show the neighborhood's support of leaving the library open.
The library was one of 11 locations recommended for replacement or expansion earlier this year in a 20-year library facility plan that was unanimously approved by the city council. The Skillman location was labeled as a potential for relocation or for an expansion that would double its size.
The city plans to sell the property if the library closure is finalized, Fox 4 reports.
When the facility plan was approved back in April, Heather Lowe, assistant director of the Dallas Public Libraries, told the Observer that “extensive community feedback sessions” would be held to address the future of the libraries in need of an expansion or replacement. Lowe did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment for this story.
According to Watson, the Skillman closure has been in the works behind the scenes. She found out about the proposal only after being told about a Dallas Morning News article about the budget deficit in which the library closure is briefly mentioned toward the end of a lengthy summary of city discussions.
“I have been in this heat walking, I'm on the bus handing people flyers, I've been going around to my neighbors and trying to talk to them,” Watson told the Observer. “People in this city have a right to know if their city council and their city manager are cutting city services to make up for their budget mismanagement.”
The closure of the branch “makes sense” because it is within four miles of several other library branches that are able to handle an increase in traffic, Jo Giudice, director of the Dallas Public Library, told Fox 4.
But Watson, who uses the Skillman library regularly, says current public transportation routes would make getting to those nearby branches complicated.
“I don't have a car. One of the things I love about where I live is that I don't need a car,” Watson said. “It's a very walkable area, so I was just devastated. [The closure] means I can't use the library.”
According to the Morning News, book vending machines could be placed throughout the area to supplement the Skillman branch.
"If you picture a Coca-Cola machine, you put your library card in, open the door, as soon as you remove something, it pins to your library card like a minibar at a hotel,” Giudice said.
While the high-tech machines could help ensure neighbors have access to reading materials, they won’t be able to replace the community center that the library has become. According to Rik Adamski, a Dallas-based city planner, publicly funded “Third Places” have become a major target in city budget conversations nationally.
Third places are spaces outside of the home and workplace where people can go to meet and generate community. The lower a barrier to entry, the better a third place is, Adamski told the Observer. In the case of a public library, the barrier to entry is none.
“It's unfortunate to see even in the public realm that these places that served everybody, where you didn't have to spend money to go, are disappearing and are getting defunded,” Adamski said. “The way that cities spend a lot of energy is in ‘top down’ type of thinking. Can we get this big convention center, can we get this big stadium, can we get these big companies? … There's not a lot of focus on how we can make cities a great place where people are going to want to be, and where the quality of life would be high.”
On top of a $38-million budget shortfall, Dallas is facing a $4 million pension deficit for the fund that helps police and firefighters retire. A robust tax base helps contribute to that pension — and to the raises that are currently proposed for city council members and the mayor — but Watson is concerned that closing services that cater to neighborhoods will deter people from moving into Dallas and adding to that tax base.
“It seems like the resources we have in Dallas that are sort of available to be used by everyone and don’t really take status into account, the services that facilitate all of us to live in our community and live better lives, those are the things that the city looks at cutting first,” Watson said.
