Financial troubles lead library board to examine districting
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RONAN — The numbers are intimidating, and the task at hand is not an easy one. But a dedicated group of people in the Ronan community are determined to save their library one way or another. To that end, the Ronan City Library Board of Trustees planned to meet Tuesday night to decide whether or not to undertake the task of creating a library district to ensure stable funding for the library.
“I suspect that they are going to vote ‘Yes’ to go forward (with a districting plan),” library director Michelle Fenger said.
It’s the most viable plan the board has found after five years of financial woes have forced the library to cut its budget in every possible area, from dropping two part-time employees to cutting eight hours a week from the library’s schedule. The library is currently funded through the city and county general funds, with a small amount — $3,500 — coming from the state.
For fiscal year 2010-11, the library is slated to receive $20,876 through city taxes. Add in the yearly $11,000 amount from Lake County, and that brings the total operating budget to $35,433. It’s just not possible to run the library on that amount, Fenger explained.
After trimming and cutting until there was no excess left, the board found that the library could run on a “very, very basic, scrape-by budget” for $60,000 a year, Fenger said. That leaves a giant question mark of $24,565 that needs to be raised — but how?
As Lake County residents are aware, the Polson City Library recently made a switch to become the North Lake County Library with the creation of a tax district that mainly encompasses the Polson School District. It’s a move only two other Montana libraries — in Stevensville and Clancy — have made successfully, but once a district is established, the library is secure, Montana State Library representative Lauren McMullen explained during a visit to Ronan last week. Of course, there are other options for setting up a library’s governing structure, too, such as a county library or an interlocal or multi-jurisdictional library, McMullen added. But when a library’s funding is based on property taxes within a specified area, there’s a lot less to worry about, she said.
“You can be pretty sure that things are stable from year to year; that’s not the same as going to your city or county and asking for funds in unstable times,” McMullen explained to the library board. “If you are your own tax authority in your own district, you’re not going to have to compete with other essential services.”
If the board moves ahead with the districting idea, they’ll have a mountain of work to climb.
“All the advantages are wonderful, (but) there’s a little hump to get over before that,” McMullen said. “You are so lucky to have neighbors to the north who are dealing with the same things.”
As those northern neighbors in Polson have found, there are many steps to creating a library district. First is an assessment phase where a steering committee or other entity assigned to the task will have to define the library’s current status, inventory its resources; assess community attitudes toward library services; create a vision to follow; make preliminary districting decisions; estimate costs of the project; and identify supporters and opponents of the districting plan. Once the library’s preliminary plan is ready, the board will have to put into action an extensive public relations campaign to convince voters that a library tax district is worthwhile and hold a public hearing on the matter. To get the issue on an election ballot, the board must either convince the county commissioners to pass a resolution to put the library district creation on the ballot for the next election, or gather enough signatures on a petition for the same purpose.
“You’re talking about a commitment from anywhere from a year to 10 years,” McMullen said of the process. “Of course, after all this is over, you’ll have this wonderful stability.”
A stabilized source of funding would allow the library to offer more services and be open more hours, but even those perks are secondary to the library’s basic needs — currently there’s not even money for buying new books.
“It’s been a real, real tight situation to keep the doors open,” Fenger said. “A library without a book budget is pretty sad.”
Fenger hopes that once the community realizes the need, people will step up to help. The Ronan City Library was started by the people, for the people and has had a long history since its humble beginnings in a home in 1914. The Good Cheer Club, a local women’s group, started things out by gathering donations of books and housing them in a member’s home. In 1923, the library moved into a room at the existing high school, where the collection remained until it was destroyed by a fire in 1930.
But the women of the Good Cheer Club stayed positive and determined, starting all over again in a room at the elementary school, where the library lived for a decade. In 1940, the city council approved the creation of a city library. It’s been through a few moves along the way before finding its current home in 1971, but the library has been the Ronan City Library ever since. A much-needed addition was completed in 2000, and the library’s services have continued to expand.
In addition to fiction, nonfiction, children’s and young adult collections, the library offers computer and printer use with Internet access, free wireless Internet, VHS and DVDs, story times and craft activities for kids and friendly staff to help with just about anything you can think of, not to mention a Wii gaming system that’s available for use in the library. And last year, the library received a technical services grant that can be used to install a handicapped accessible door and improve computer services. The money will replace some old computers and add two new ones, bringing the total number of machines to nine. With the grant, the library will also be able to hire a part-time technical services worker to manage the computers and teach some basic computer skills classes, Fenger noted.
Besides offering a safe, relaxed environment anyone from a toddler to a 100-year-old can enjoy, the library makes it easier for people to apply for jobs and write resumes — tasks often done on the library computers.
“I believe we’re a very essential service in our community,” Fenger said.
She encouraged everyone in the community to visit the library if they don’t regularly, and said questions and suggestions are welcome.
