What is equity?

The specifics of the effort to re-draft the JPA governing the County Library System came to my attention very late in the process. I was pleased to read the paragraph in the draft revision which proposed allowing communities to provide supplemental funds for local branches. When the county library system budget does not meet locally perceived needs a community could support their local branch. The Monday closure of the branches, in place for the last three years, could be reversed by allowing communities to fund Monday library services. It would be a valuable mechanism for communities to have library services responsive to local needs.
This issue is broader than just the issue of local library funding. It concerns me that the Healdsburg City Council chose to support the revised JPA on the condition that the provision for local branch funding be removed from the document. While there may be good reasons to reconsider this provision, the justification offered by the Council, supported by the Friends of Healdsburg Library, was that the local funding provision worked against “equity” in library services.
This seems like a misguided understanding of “equity” in public services. It is unfortunate, but not central to my disappointment, that Healdsburg has veto power over the revised JPA agreement due to the history of the JPA governing Sonoma County’s Library system. As an aside, I wonder if that veto is “equitable”?
While my concern may be too late to influence the adoption of the revised JPA agreement, the question of “equity” deserves a more critical exploration than that expressed in the minutes of the City Council meeting of December 2.
If hours in branches were the only measure of equity. But surely that is not the only dimension of equity. For example, should the contents of the Wine Library, physically located in the Healdsburg library, be distributed in equal measure to every branch library that has a vineyard or winery in its service area? Wouldn’t that be more equitable? Should branch library collections be apportioned by algorithm so that every citizen with a library card is the same distance from a branch? Should library collections be distributed so that travel time to the geographic center of the county’s entire collection was equal for all cards holders? Should the size of the Spanish language collection be based upon the percentage of Spanish speaking card holders – by branch or by system? What is equity? And for what population?
Perhaps the question of equity is not about readers and library patrons at all, but staff of the library system. Unequal service hours at each branch would be operationally complicated. But does the library system organize itself to be equitable for patrons or staff? How would the union contract address such differences – regarding the use of non-unionized employees, part time hours, volunteers, or seniority? These are complications that might make extra hours in a branch “inequitable” – to library employees, not patrons.
It is easy to wave the flag of equity, but what does it stand for? Equal opportunity? Equal resources? Equal access? Equal work? Equal … what? What is equity?
A system is not homogenous, but something that works as a whole, composed of smaller systems, and participates in larger systems. Our County library is part of a state wide system that enables access to materials not available locally. But the state system doesn’t require that every participating local system have the same hours, the same distribution of materials (Spanish, Fiction, Reference, Media, Periodicals, etc.).
It is with real disappointment that the City Council of Healdsburg threatened to exercise its veto based only upon a paragraph perceived to introduce “inequity” into the library services of Sonoma County.
I think this would be very inequitable!
Richard Burg is a Healdsburg resident.