The County Board of Supervisors has done the annual allocation of public library funding, and some library directors are not pleased.
The West Liberty Public Library and the Wilton Public Library each received $17,000 of the funds.
As they do every year, the three public libraries in Muscatine County give a budget presentation to the Muscatine County Board of Supervisors.
Each director explains their needs, their dreams and their financial realities to the Board, and then the funds are divvied up.
While $17,000 might sound like a nice chunk of change, it amounts to one part-time salary. It’s a couple of new computers. It’s a bunch of books. But it’s not all three, it’s pick-your-top-priority.
Allie Paarsmith, Director of the West Liberty Public Library, feels like it’s not nearly enough to suit her library’s needs.
“We are all contracted to serve the same rural population,” Paarsmith said, “and the rural population for all of us stays the same.”
Paarsmith assumes that city population is factored in, but as departments of the cities they’re in, the libraries are also supported by city funding, and Paarsmith feels that county funding should be distributed based on the needs and numbers of the rural population.
“This past year, I have asked for a third,” Paarsmith said.
But she got a little more than an eighth.
Kristi Hager, Director of the Wilton Public Library, is in the same unpleasant position.
“We do an annual report of what we have done, what we’re looking forward to doing with whatever funding we can get and then we can make an argument for justification for our funding,” Hager said.
But Hager did not get the money she was hoping for.
The bulk of the funding went to the Musser Public Library in Muscatine, roughly $134,000.
“They have a far larger budget, so they have some technology and services that we don’t have just because we, as a small library, can’t afford,” Hager said.
Hager feels that if the money were distributed more equally, then the Wilton Public Library would be able to keep up with the Musser.
She would like to move toward a system in which the librarians get together to decide how to distribute the money, as they do in many counties in Iowa.
She would like to be able to get performers and educators to tour all three libraries for the Summer Reading Program.
“It would be a thing that would benefit all of our libraries,” Hager said.
Robert Fiedler, Director of the Musser Library in Muscatine, is following the same process as Paarsmith and Hager.
“We are directed by the City of Muscatine to prepare our budget request on a status quo service level basis,” Fiedler said. “This includes a slight annual operating increase of typically 3 percent.”
The other county libraries also have that same 3 percent increase, but a small increase on a small amount of money is still a small amount of money. The Musser always requests 3 percent more than last year, just like the other librarians.
“The county agreed to those requests,” Fiedler said.
The problem, as Paarsmith and Hager see it, is that the County Board of Supervisors are only granting the requests of one library, and the same thing has happened several years in a row.
Fortunately, the City of West Liberty does most of the funding for the West Liberty Public Library, and the City of Wilton takes care of the Wilton Public Library.
Wilton’s annual operating budget is around $250,000, similar to West Liberty’s. The Musser operates on about one million per year.
Public libraries also apply for grant money and sometimes receive donations, all of which can result in improvements to the library’s technology and programming.
Paarsmith has been fortunate to get all the funding she requested from the city.
“I did all of the research to determine what the library needs to thrive instead of just survive, and we got it. It really shows the trust that the city has in the library, and in my administration, and in the board. We have a really strong library board right now,” she said.
“We’re doing what we need to,” Paarsmith said, “but the county is not willing to listen.”
Hager and Paarsmith are hoping that the citizens can help them increase their funding by talking to the Muscatine County Board of Supervisors.
“Letting the board of supervisors know that they feel that that discrepancy isn’t fair, that they would prefer the distribution be a little more equal.”