Libraries,

from p. 1

committee, which has to sign off on all county department budgets so they can be incorporated into the overall budget. OnSept.25,thefinancecommitteemadetherecommendation to reimburse Clark County circulations at 90% and Marathon County circulations at 25%, which would result in an overall cost savings of $25,538.85 for the county, which would actually boost funding for libraries that don’t have many Marathon County patrons but would also result in significant budget reductions for the libraries with a high percentage of Marathon County patrons.

When comparing the executive committee’s 78/70 proposal to the finance committee’s 90/25 proposal, the Abbotsford library would be receiving $14,494.18 less, the Colby library would be receiving $41,148.59 less and the Dorchester library would be receiving $10,674.67 less. The other seven libraries in the county would be receiving anywhere from roughly $2,500 to $10,000 more.

Colby Community Library Director Vicky Calmes said she had to submit her budget to the City of Colby in early September before the finance committee met, and she used the executive committee’s numbers when telling the city how much money she needed. Now she is in the position of potentially having to ask more from the city when its budget had already been set and funds allocated.

“What the executive committee recommended (78/70) is what we figured would move on to finance and be approved, so that’s what our municipalities were going off of,” she said. “Usually whatever the executive committee proposes, the finance committee rubber stamps it and it goes on, but I learned my lesson there.”

The Colby library circulates over 60,000 items every year and has more than double the circulations of any other Clark County library. In 2023, Colby had 23,339 circulations from Clark County residents, 21,338 from Marathon County residents and another 20,000-plus from city residents. However, because the library has such a high percentage of Marathon County users, it would stand to lose more under the 90/25 funding proposal.

“If the library worked harder and had more circulations, it should be compensated for those circulations,” said Calmes. “Instead of being rewarded for getting more circulations, it feels like we’re being punished. We’re not being compensated fairly… For us not to be compensated for circulations because they came from a Marathon County person instead of a Colby person doesn’t seem right. We’re serving Marathon County, just as we would serve a city person or a Clark County person. We’re spending money on these people. We’re a public library and can’t discriminate; we can’t charge them. And they aren’t going to drive to Wausau to use that library when they can walk five blocks away.”

At the last county board meeting, it was brought up that perhaps the libraries could reach out to Marathon County to see if it would pick up some of the tab for its residents that were using Clark County libraries. However, there has been a longstanding agreement between the counties not to charge each other. Act 150 was signed into law in 1998, establishing the standard for county library funding, and in 2000, Marathon and Clark counties made an agreement that neither one would charge the other for their circulations. It has stayed that way since. There was concern that if Clark County started asking, then Marathon might start charging in return.

Calmes said the bottom line was, if Marathon County circulations remained at 25%, it would be “very hurtful” to her library operations.

“We’d never be catching up and never paying for our circulations. We are building rich here, but donors and benefactors don’t pay for our annual budget. The $41,000 loss between executive and finance would be two employees (part-time). Or it’s the purchase of our materials budget. Or we can also cut down hours. Less hours means less programming and when you start cancelling programs, there are less people in the building, which means less circulations. So we’d be constantly on the hamster wheel trying to catch up.”

Sue Bedroske of the Dorchester library agreed that the funding cut would severely impact her library’s operations as well.

“We’d have to decrease hours, people, materials or all the above,” she said.

She said the $15,711 cut from last year’s amount would likely amount to the elimination of a staff position and could signal the closure of the library in a few years if funding remained the same.

The finance committee planned to meet on Wednesday, Oct. 16, after deadline, and revisit the topic of library funding.

“We will see what we’ve got Wednesday. It was a little disappointing with how it turned out the first time around, so we’re hoping to do something different,” said Chuck Rueth, chair of the finance committee.

Ken Gerhardt, another member of the finance committee who has been especially involved with library funding, could not be reached for comment prior to deadline.

The finance committee could make a different proposal; however, the county budget has already been published with the 90% Clark/25% Marathon proposal, so in order to change that, a county board member would have to propose an amendment at the full county board meeting on Nov. 7, which is when the board is set to approve the budget. The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. in the county boardroom and is open to the public.