Earlier this month, Councilman Carl DeMaio released a memo saying cancelling the downtown schoobrary would save up to $63 million over the next five years.
City Chief Operating Officer Jay Goldstone responded in a memo today:
In this memorandum, you rely on old facts and faulty assumptions in concluding that various actions, including stopping the construction of a new Main Library, will save the General Fund $63 million. You further suggest that these funds could be used to offset the projected deficit of $179 million in fiscal year 2011, a deficit you have characterized as $200 million, though this timeline is clearly not true of some of your proposed actions, and this is highly questionable in all others.
Timing aside, many of the budgetary shell games you envision, though creative and extremely aggressive, are of dubious legality and could therefore prove counterproductive to the Mayor’s efforts to restore the City’s reputation for financial integrity and avoid the high cost of litigation.
Nonetheless, your passion for trying to kill the new Main Library, at whatever the cost, is duly noted.
Here’s full memo.