Library Late Fines

11/02/2009

The Seattle Public Library might reduce its hours because of the city's budget shortfall. But there could be another revenue source. The library has collected $1 million this year in late fines. And another $600,000 is still outstanding from people with overdue books and other materials.

Jan Revoyr sits at the check–out desk at Seattle's Greenwood library branch. One of her jobs is to let people know if they have outstanding fines. People like me, Josh Platis.

Librarian: "Ok, you have $13.10 in late fees."

Reporter: "Do you know what I owe that for?"

Librarian: "Well they're all old fines, they go back from 2001, 2000, and 1998."

Fortunately, I can still check out a book.

Librarian: "You can check out up to fifty items right now and request up to twenty–five items and you're not blocked from any services."

That's as long as my fines don't go over $15.

If they go over $25 I may get a letter from a collection agency. The library's budget shortfall is $2.6 million for the next year. But library officials don't plan to increase revenue by boosting fines. So says Megan Taylor. She's the library's circulation services manager.

Taylor: "Those are really sort of an incentive to bring things back on time. So that people can use them sooner so that we don't have to buy more copies, to turn them over in a reasonable amount of time."

Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata says collecting fines is difficult. It's like getting people to pay their parking tickets. He suggests creating an amnesty holiday like they've done for parking scofflaws in the past.

Licata: "Allow people who owe a great deal on their fines to come in and basically get their fine reduced by paying a portion for what they owe. But as far as how much money that would bring in, it's hard to say."

Megan Taylor says the city's late fines are already on the high side, compared to King County's libraries. Taylor maintains the library is there for everyone and she doesn't want to push people away.

Taylor: "There are a lot of people in Seattle that have financial problems and we wouldn't see them again if fines were 50 cents a day and they got up to $6 or $7, they just wouldn't be able to use us. I don't think you can put it all on the backs of your users. I mean we're a public place and we're really here to try to serve everyone. I mean we're not like a business and we're not like a bookstore and I wouldn't want to work here if we were."

Some individuals have rung up as much as $2,000 in fines. That's almost 36 books that have been late for a year.

I decided I'd better pay up, but there was a slight problem.

Librarian: "Unfortunately the Seattle Public Library cannot take plastic, we only take cash or check at this time."

Reporter: "Oh, well maybe I'm not going to pay up, I don't think I have any cash. I have a dollar."

Librarian: "If you would like to pay a dollar on your account we'll take it."

For KUOW News, I'm Josh Platis.

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