Efficacy Of Fines And Fees Account For Gaps In The Budget

As a practical solution, fines and fees account for gaps in the budget for a library system, which has seen the restoration of fines in the instance of the Windsor area library system after a trial period because the gaps have increased to the point of infeasibility and the lost revenue per year of $200,000 added up to the entire collection development budget.

In the academic community this item has been discussed at length as to the patron’s perception of fines as well as their impact in the community. A significant debate continues to occur as to two major issues: The efficacy of fines as it relates to the return rate of materials and the effect that fine imposition has on the library system itself. Considering the advocates of the field

For example, lost materials either in part or total as well as damaged items are still applied to patrons. In numerous institutions that have implemented a fine free policy, there still exists a policy for charging for lost and damaged items. In the case of the Sydney, Australia library system, after a checkout period has lapsed into the “billed” category, the patron will be frozen out of the system until the material is returned or paid for. Other districts such as the Pemberton, British Columbia, the Algonquin, Illinois, the library system charge only for lost and damaged material. When assessing their annual reports for 2015 the town of just over 2,700 had a budget of $353,000 and anticipated around $1,000 of lost materials. The actual total ended up being $363,000 in the budget and only $873 of lost material costs. Out of their $61,000 budget for their material collection, this ends up accounting for a 1.4% shrinkage rate in the

Columbus, Ohio began their fine free program this year, their costs of $550,000 in fines compared to a $68,000,000 budget show an increased cost of only .8%. In a larger system such as Phoenix, Arizona, with a budget of $34,000,000 only took in $307,000 in fines last year, for a rate of .9%. This rate is a general trend among large cities and can be easily offset in a larger city with a larger amount of revenue like Nashville. Considering the funding of Nashville Public Library by the Metro government, the loss of fines and fees would be an immensely small and replaceable amount in the budget. Last year only $305,000 were collected by Nashville Public Library out of a total funding of $28,831,500. This would account for a total of 1.05% of NPL’s Operating Budget. In the overall Fund that fines contribute to, this accounts for only .04% of the General Fund itself. NPL itself obtained $2.1 million in General Services Funding, or just over a 700% return on what was sent in through