[Publib] Food for fines revisited

[Phalbe Henriksen]

Patrick Sweeney wrote:
> "I have to say that I love 'Food for Fines' drives...."
"Love" doesn't make it legal.

> So, if you returned your items (no matter how late) with some food (no 
> matter how much) we would wave your fines.  We got so many materials 
> returned with a can of food or two that I can't imagine what we saved 
> in the cost of re-ordered and re-processed materials.
Compared to what?

"Sure, some people returned their materials with a package of 
Ramen Noodles and got 20-30 dollars of fines waved..."

Surely, you jest. You allowed them to waive any amount of fines for any 
amount of food????

"...but we got the material back, we got the food..."

No, you didn't get the food. Some non-profit agency got the food. And, 
in the end, private citizens got the food. Your only reward was the 
returned material. You could have achieved the same with a fine-free 
month, as far as your library is concerned.

"...and got the patron to come back to the library.  Really it was 
a WIN, WIN, WIN situation."

Ummm, you *want* that patron back????

"I would also like to point out that for every person who brought in 1 
package of ramen noodles or the like, we got people who didn't owe fines 
bringing in food for the local community pantry that we were donating 
the food to and we also got people bringing in WAY more food than their 
fines were worth."

OK, so why not just do a food drive with the library as the drop-off point?

"I can't figure out a bad angle to look at this from, and I tried!"

I can, and I've pointed it out. *No one* has said that their county's 
attorney and/or elected board has approved this. The IRS has a new rule 
in place that anyone who has a cel phone paid for by their employer has 
to declare the value of the number of minutes they spent on personal 
phone calls as "income" on their tax return. Do you think that same IRS 
would say, "OK, no prob. Let people donate food, and be able to use it 
as a tax deduction, to a local non-profit in order to write off a local 
government debt"????

Think about it, people!

Phalbe Henriksen