Private Equity Firm
Acquires Rita’s Italian Ice, Now Eying California Public Library
Huffington Post: 9.14.2017 by Donald Cohen
January.
The outskirts of Philadelphia. 23 degrees. It’s hard to imagine anyone buying
Rita’s Italian ice.
But
Argosy did just that earlier this year.
Specializing
in acquiring companies, cutting costs, and selling them for a profit, the
Pennsylvania-based private equity firm added the frozen dessert chain Rita’s to
its portfolio of investments, which includes a prison phone company and a
handful of Pizza Hut franchises, among others.
And
now they’re eyeing the library in Escondido, California. That’s right, a public
library.
Well,
not exactly. Argosy owns Library Systems
& Services (LS&S), the country’s largest library
management company, which is trying to sell its services to the small city
north of San Diego. LS&S is using the same rap—that privatization saves
taxpayer money by bringing “optimization” and “efficiency”—that it’s used to
gobble up 83 libraries across the country.
While
the Escondido City Council seems to have bought in—they voted last month
to outsource to LS&S but have yet to sign the contract—taxpayers aren’t
having it. The library’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously against
privatization and thousands of residents have signed a petition to keep the
library public.
Even
the American Library Association has weighed in,
writing that after privatization the “community will not know how its taxpayer
dollars are being spent.” READ MORE >>
