A last-ditch effort has failed to prevent the closure of the community space in the downtown Millennium Library that provided help to vulnerable people, including the homeless.
The city cut funding for the community connections hub in the 2025 budget and the office closed as of Dec. 31, 2024.
Daniel McIntyre Coun. Cindy Gilroy (Daniel McIntyre) presented a motion to Friday’s meeting of the community services committee that called for further discussion on the decision and reconsideration of axing its budget.
“I’m not feeling too good, because I think that downtown is going to suffer for the loss of this community connection space,” Gilroy said after the meeting Friday. None of her committee colleagues — Matt Allard (St. Boniface), Shawn Dobson (St. James) and chair Vivian Santos (Point Douglas) — had backed her up.
The lobby space was staffed with library and community crisis workers who provided information and referrals to social services to patrons. They weren’t subject to being scanned by the metal detector and security search at the entrance. It would cost $628,000 to restore the space for a year.
Santos said Friday she wouldn’t support cutting other services to fund community connections.
“Nobody’s come up with a solution, except to continue to fund it, and we know money is tight right now; $650,000 to cut something else out is not what I want to hear,” she said.
The hub handled 24,296 information requests, while all other Millennium Library service desks combined handled 29,701 requests, from October 2023 to September 2024.
Many requests were made by Winnipeg’s homeless, low-income and newcomer populations, some of whom were using library services for the first time.
“Library services are changing, and that’s a good thing,” Gilroy said. “It’s not about just books anymore.”
On Dec. 11 when the budget was unveiled, finance committee chairman Jeff Browaty said the office closed, in part, because it posed safety concerns to staff and patrons.
Joe Curnow, a member with the advocacy group Millennium For All, said the library is less safe without community connections because it is even more understaffed now.
“I think that the mayor and (executive policy committee) will talk about this as a great win for libraries again, and it’s just not. We know we need it much better,” she said.
“We need universal hours, we need community-led safety strategies to actually be funded, we need more circulation and programming money. Our system is in crisis, and they continue to cut it.”
Community connections had 4.2 full-time equivalent library staff, a librarian, two community safety hosts and three part-time library service assistants. Their contracts will not be renewed.
Delegations can speak to the topic at Wednesday’s community services meeting and the EPC meeting on Jan. 21.
malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
Malak Abas
Reporter
Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.
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