A better incentive

We are a family that has made a lot of use of various libraries over many years. Partly because of the volume of materials that we check out, often with different due dates, (and also because of faulty memory and whatnot :) ), we have amassed a modest amount of late fines from time to time. I think that once or twice, we went over the stated limit that then prohibited further checkouts. That was mildly annoying, but we would then pay our accrued fines ($10 or so?) so that we could resume our library use. We much preferred it when that time happened to coincide with the ability to pay off fines with canned goods for the Food Bank or something similar. It seems more worthwhile for the fines to go to something like that than just into the pot for the library. I think that while you are phasing out fines, it would be worthwhile considering whether to replace fines with a required donation to the Food Bank or some other cause that directly and practically benefits people in our community.