Sir – Keith Mitchell sees no alternative to closing libraries and accuses the rest of us for failing to help him out on this.

Here are thre ideas for him:

  • Compress working hours for most county council sites, including headquarters, to a four-day week, thus saving the monetary and environmental costs attached to full-on heating, electricity, mileage allowances, and the like. In 2008 the State of Utah reduced its energy costs by 13 per cent (Time magazine, Monday, September 7, 2009) by moving to a four-day week. If employees choose to spend more time on Fridays driving, that’s up to them, but they won’t have to travel into work. Overall, the amount of money the council spends on running the offices will be reduced.
  • “We’re all in this together”, according to the Conservative leadership. Fine. Cut the salaries of senior council officials and department heads by ten per cent across the board. Paying librarians and youth workers is essential: paying Mr Mitchell and his colleagues an enormous increment over the median wage is not.

They’ll still get a great deal more income, and greater benefits, than 85 per cent of the taxpayers do (I’m allowing for the presence of the super-rich in the county in this figure.)

  • Shorten library hours and share librarianship duties. Not ideal, but preferable to shutting them altogether.

I would remind Mr Mitchell that many of our libraries, like our youth clubs, have had significant funding from private persons who raised money or made donations in kind for charitable purposes.

Closing and selling our libraries and youth clubs, as an alternative to innovative restructuring, is not only short-sighted and lazy, but a violation of trust between donors and the county acting in de facto trusteeship.

Professionals in local government in these straitened times have a duty of care which includes imaginative and consultative problem solving. If they can’t and won’t then they should retire and let others do the job.

Dr K.J. Kaye, Wolvercote