Library fees lack support

MAT-SU — Whether it’s Wasilla or Palmer, charging to use municipal libraries is an unpopular solution to ongoing funding challenges.

Palmer City Council may repeal its recent decision to enact a $20 library card fee for residents living outside the city limits who use the municipal library. The fee was created to help replace dwindling funds provided by a block grant from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. The council will revisit its library fee at its next meeting, Nov. 13 at Palmer City Hall.

“The last time they put a fee on the library in 1994 people were very angry and that was $5,” Palmer Public Library Director Pat Kilmain said.

Palmer’s reconsideration of its library fee comes on the heels of a similar decision made by Wasilla City Council last month. After also originally considering a $20 library card fee for nonresidents, the Wasilla council voted unanimously against a fee.

With about 80 percent of its books being checked out by people living outside city limits, Palmer City Council Member Tony Pippel believes repealing the fee will be a welcome move in Palmer.

Although charging to use public libraries isn’t gaining any popularity in the Valley, funding issues still need to be addressed, Pippel said.

Linda Brenner, community development director for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, said the decision to reduce the funds the Borough provides to libraries in municipalities, like Palmer and Wasilla, came about as an option to minimize Borough expenses. Ultimately, the Borough assembly decided to reduce the grant by 20 percent a year over five years and eventually not fund city libraries.

Although the Borough plans to end city library funding, Brenner said it may be possible to “make the libraries an area-wide power of the Borough” to relieve funding problems.

“Right now the city and Borough libraries work so well together that the general public does not know they are not all operated by the Borough,” Brenner said. “We want to keep the service seamless and find a solution.”

To transfer control of municipal libraries to the Borough would require a vote, Brenner said, adding that with the libraries under Borough control, funding and expansion opportunities could increase.

While the Borough may want to control the libraries in Palmer and Wasilla, the municipalities may balk, Pippel said.

“It’s going to be a huge disappointment to all the supporters of the Palmer Public Library,” he said, adding there’s no reason to not continue a joint-funding agreement. “The option that will work best is that the Borough would continue to supply about 40 percent of the funding [for libraries in Palmer and Wasilla].”

Under Borough control, Pippel fears the quality of the Palmer library would wane.

“We have the best library and the best staff because it was started by locals and run by locals,” he said.