Cities look to borough to help libraries

PALMER — What is the Mat-Su Borough going to do with its three library systems?

It’s a perennial question in the Valley, and one that has returned to the forefront now that Wasilla is weighing options for a new library.

In a nutshell, the problem is this: Palmer and Wasilla each have their own libraries. Then there’s a small network of borough libraries for outlying communities. People who live outside of city limits often come into town to use library resources. Since borough residents are benefiting from city programs, that means the borough should shoulder some of that load, the cities say, including paying some of those costs. Lately, the borough hasn’t been doing that, at least not to the degree it once did.

“We are more than happy to have them come to our library and have them come for free,” Wasilla City Councilwoman Diane Woodruff said at a meeting of all three city councils and the borough assembly last week. “We just need your support to have them continue doing what they’re doing.”

Palmer City Councilman Mike Chmielewski compared the problem to a “low-grade infection,” something that’s always in the background but that crops up from time to time. His colleague on the council, Kevin Brown, backed him up.

“We poke at it with a stick for awhile and then we all walk away,” Brown said. ”I would like a commitment by this group that we will work on this.”

Assemblywoman Cindy Bettine said one of the simplest solutions would be for the borough to take over the cities’ libraries. Chmielewski wasn’t too keen on that; the Palmer library, he said, is a cultural center for the community. Wasilla was also not on board.

“The city of Wasilla does not want to give up (library) powers,” Mayor Verne Rupright said.

Assemblywoman Lynne Woods pointed out that the money the borough used to give the cities for their libraries was a block grant taken out of the general fund. Though the borough collects taxes for libraries, it goes into a fund the borough can’t dip into to hand over to the city.

So what’s the solution?

Houston doesn’t have a library, but Mayor Roger Purcell put out an idea that Rupright and Wasilla Councilwoman Leone Harris seemed amenable to.

Essentially, Purcell said, the borough could treat libraries the same way it treats rescue service in Houston and Palmer. Those services, Purcell said, work on a lease agreement; the borough pays to lease space from the cities.

“The mill rate, the amount they charge for the mill rate inside the city would then be used in a payback agreement, a lease agreement,” Purcell said.

Rescue and ambulance services, he said, are paid for out of those same funds Woods said couldn’t be handed over to the city.

But Bettine said she didn’t want to see the bodies close off the option of the borough taking over the libraries. Without that, she said, the problem will only be temporarily solved and likely will crop up again once new members are elected to the assembly.

“Five assemblies from now they’re going to be cutting their budgets,” and libraries, generally, are among the first places assemblies look.

She said it might not be a bad thing to ask voters to decide the question.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.