[rahimnathwani]

My city has a population of 800k.

The library's annual budget is $200MM.

I wonder what proportion of the population uses the library system at all. I can't imagine it's more than 25%. If I'm right, the cost is at least $1,000 per library user per year.

This seems like a lot.

(Of the $200MM, only $22MM is spent on books/ebooks/media aka 'collections'.)

The libraries are generally comfortable and well maintained, but given the cost I wonder whether the major functions (books, space, wifi) could be provided more cheaply by Amazon and Wework.