After problems this past year getting books onto shelves, the City of Bartlett is making a management change at the Bartlett Public Library, opting out of the Memphis system.

On Tuesday, Jan. 9, the suburb’s Board of Mayor and Alderman voted 4-2 to break away from the Memphis Public Libraries system and go with Avenu Insights & Analytics, managers of the Germantown Community Library.

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With the vote, Bartlett became the last of the suburbs in Shelby County to leave the MPL system.

Prompting the change is a shortfall of $36,000 in undelivered materials over the past fiscal year. Bartlett pays MPL $94,000 annually to maintain its book collection, but over the course of the last fiscal year MPL was not able to deliver on about $36,000, according to Steve Sones, Bartlett chief administrative officer.

Last month, MPL Deputy Director Chris Marszalek blamed the shortfall on challenges in MPL’s collection development area due to staff turnover.

On Tuesday, Gay Cain, MPL assistant director of strategic partnerships and former manager of the Bartlett library from 1999 to 2015, addressed the concern over the funds.

“This contract, this partnership has worked great since 2004, 2005,” Cain said, noting that the person in charge of MPL collections department passed away a couple of years ago. “She took with her a lot of institutional knowledge, and we struggled to figure out how to differentiate what was spent on Bartlett and what was spent on other locations.”

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Avenu has a 40-year history of managed services across the U.S., working with 80 jurisdictions. Avenu Insights has managed the Germantown library since 2021.

On Tuesday, Avenu representatives touted the fact the Germantown Community Library had 487 programs this past fiscal year compared to 262 in Bartlett. Germantown library attendees also topped Bartlett 5,206 compared to 3,725.

“Having the right programming that hits the mark also increases the number of people who want to get a library card,” Dana Braccia, Avenu chief librarian and director of client success, said.

Alderman Jack Young voted to make the change to Avenu.

“It’s my understanding that administration has been trying for months to deal with this issue with the library. Not only could they not get a meeting on four requests, they couldn’t even get a return phone call,” Young said.

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Having more local control was a big factor for Alderman David Reaves in his vote for Avenu. He criticized the lack of recent timely responses from MPL.

“It is ridiculous, but it was the same way when we were with the Shelby County School System and Memphis City School System,” he said. “It’s reflective of Memphis leadership.”

Aldermen Robert Griffin and Kevin Quinn voted to stay with MPL, which has operated the Bartlett library since 2004. That year other suburbs like Germantown and Collierville chose private management, leaving the Memphis and Shelby County system.

“I’m very disappointed in the votes on the library,” Quinn said. “The citizens are losing so much by going with Avenu. We could easily manage the property just as well. Avenu will nickel and dime the city to death.”

Resident Mike Sisson noted that the Memphis library system has 1.5 million physical items in its catalog, and he was one of several people who voiced appreciation of the scope and access to such a large collection.

“The aggregated Bartlett, Germantown and Collierville libraries would hold approximately 320,000 items,” he said. “This is a reduction of 79% — that’s the real world of what you are losing.”