Faced with the possibility of severe cuts to the library budget, Library Director Mary Wilson spoke to the selectmen at their meeting Tuesday about the available options for the coming fiscal year.
Wilson is concerned that, no matter what, town residents will be faced with a decrease in library services in 2009. She pointed out that Warrant Article 6, which would have funded $10,000 worth of substitute librarian hours, was needed to ensure level funding of the previous year’s budget.
—Roy Moffa, Library Trustee
Now, with the override defeated and the prospect of townwide budget cuts, a “best case” scenario would still involve a decrease in library services to town residents, she said.
At the meeting, Wilson, along with Library Trustees Ginger Kendall and Roy Moffa, offered a memo that detailed the impact of different levels of cuts to the budget.
Without Warrant Article 6, said Wilson, the library will not have the funds to pay for substitutes when librarians take sick days, medical emergencies, or vacation. With the new “use it or lose it” policy, town employees may not roll over their earned time off, so Wilson anticipates that there will be increased need for substitute staff. Without the money for substitutes, she predicts sporadic library closings throughout the year when there are staff shortages.
With a $200,000 override, Wilson predicts that the library would be required to cut $5,952. She calculated this number by assuming that with townwide cuts of $248,000, 30 percent, or $74,500, would need to be cut by town departments other than the school. Of that number, 8 percent would be the library’s share. In this scenario, she said, the impact for the library would be reduced hours equal to the library’s closing for 11 Saturdays in the summer.
Wilson used the same model to calculate that the library budget would have to be cut by $10,752 with no override. This scenario would result in even further reduced operating hours.
Wilson and the trustees also expressed their concern that the reductions proposed for the library by Town Administrator Tim Bragan were “disproportionate” relative to cuts proposed for other town departments. Bragan had proposed that, with a $200,000 override, the library budget be reduced by $19,100, or 24 percent of the town’s share of budget cuts.
Moffa expressed his anger at the prospect of reducing the library’s budget and he questioned why the library was being forced to come to the table “voluntarily” with a list of proposed cuts. “Our job as trustees is to provide the maximum services to the town,” he said. “That’s why we raised $5 million to build this library. Let the town decide. Put it on a ballot, and let them vote.”
Board of Selectmen Chairman Leo Blair acknowledged the difficulty of the situation and asked Wilson and the trustees if they had considered other options for generating revenue for the library. Kendall said that, given the library’s philosophy to provide space for cultural and educational events for free, it would be difficult to make the decision to go to fee-based programming.
Blair also asked if the library could increase its revenue by taking control of receipts from overdue fines and other library fees, receipts which are currently funneled directly to the town’s general fund. When Finance Director Lorraine Leonard confirmed that the library could create a revolving account to take in library fees, Blair suggested that this would be a way the library could at least have “more control over its own destiny.” But Leonard pointed out that reassigning the approximately $10,000 per year that the library collects in late charges to the library budget would simply leave that hole somewhere else in the town’s budget that would need to be filled.
Selectman Peter Warren suggested that there might be other creative solutions to reducing the library’s labor costs. In considering how to arrange for additional library monitors on early release days, for example, Warren proposed that high schoolers in need of community service hours might volunteer their time. Warren’s idea was met with interest and approval on all sides.
Trying to find consensus amongst the disparate interests at the meeting, Blair acknowledged the difficulty of the task ahead.
“We all appreciate what a wonderful asset the library is, and we’d like to find a way to be as helpful as we can,” he said. “But we’ve also heard a loud message from the voters about the budget, so we’re paying close attention to that.”
He added, “It’s a very stormy sea, and it’s a small boat.”
