Library funding mulled

MAT-SU -- Representatives from three area governmental bodies gathered last week to discuss the importance of libraries in the Valley and talk about possible solutions to funding disparities.

City officials and council members from the cities of Wasilla and Palmer met with the Mat-Su Borough Assembly and borough officials at the Palmer depot building Thursday to discuss a proposal developed by Recreation and Library Services Director Bruce Urban. The proposal was geared to address what some city officials have called -- and borough officials have recognized as -- a funding disparity between the percentage of library usage by patrons from outside the city limits.

According to information compiled by Urban, the borough has non-areawide library powers, meaning libraries outside the city limits are operated and staffed by the borough, but those within the limits of Houston, Palmer or Wasilla are under the guidance of that governing body. The borough contributes revenue sharing funds to Palmer and Wasilla in the form of block grants, to help fund library operations and offset costs incurred by the about 80 percent of city library patrons who come from outside the city limits.

Urban's information also showed that the borough's contribution to libraries has been declining over time, partially the result of declining revenue sharing dollars between the state and the borough. In 1999, for example, the borough received about $1.4 million in revenue sharing, which was broken up among libraries, road service areas and fire service areas, for a total of about $426,000 for libraries. In 2003, the borough received less than $800,000 from the state, with a little more than $240,000 going to libraries. Although libraries have consistently received about one-third of the revenue sharing dollars, decreasing revenue sharing funds has meant less funding all around.

Urban told the gathered officials that five funding alternatives were considered, including eliminating the borough contribution altogether and charging a non-resident usage fee, changing the funding structure to include library service areas or giving the library board the authority to tax. These alternatives, Urban said, were shelved in favor of moving forward with a revision of the current method of contribution.

Urban developed a new formula for the borough's contribution to libraries to be guided by three rules -- that it address non-city circulation rates, that it relate to city and borough personnel costs and that it relate to available revenue sharing funds through a percentage cap.

The formula Urban compiled takes into account a number of different factors -- circulation, holdings, hours of service, the number of automation computers and the number of public use Internet computers.

"If this formula were in place today, you could see there would be a substantial increase to cities," Urban said during the presentation. The proposed funding formula, if included in the borough's fiscal year 2004 budget, would deliver just over $370,000 to the city of Palmer and about $433,000 to the city of Wasilla. That's a significant jump from last year's amounts of $195,000 and $322,000 respectively.

Although everyone expressed interest at the prospect of revising the funding formula, several people had questions about it.

"I see your statistics, I see your funding formula … I would like to ask you, for the sake of argument, about some other possible funding formulas," said Wasilla Library Director Chester Simton. "This is a starting point, but I hope there will be more meetings."

Simton asked if Urban had thought about incorporating other figures into the funding formula -- the number of volunteers and hours volunteered, the number of intralibrary loans supplied by libraries, and the number of classes visited or hosted by the library, for example.

"We did strive to have a simple formula, perhaps too simplistic," Borough Manager John Duffy said.

Although talk of a central library surfaced, some at the meeting agreed a central library may be less important than centralizing some time-consuming administrative duties such as processing orders of books.

Borough assembly member Jim Colver added that, were the borough to consider developing a central library in the core area, he felt the new library should augment the services of existing libraries, not replace them. The list of needed library capital projects on the borough's capital funding plan includes replacing the Sutton and Talkeetna libraries and expanding the Willow library. The needs of those existing services are currently ranked higher on the project list than a new core-area library.

If put into place, Duffy said the direct impact would be an added $700,000 to the budget and could raise the areawide mill levy up to three-tenths of a mil. Assembly member Talis Colberg said if the increase, which amounts to about 60 percent more funding than the cities currently receive, isn't passed and the formula is applied using only the revenue sharing funds, the cities may be less pleased about the outcome. He, too, had some concerns with the prospect.

"[Funding for] the city of Wasilla would actually decline and the city of Palmer would increase," Colberg said. "I am always a little bit leery of substantial jumps in funding at any time."

Numerous other suggestions were made at the meeting, and Urban agreed to try to incorporate the suggestions.

"We'll take the comments we heard tonight and begin refining the formula," Duffy said. "We'll work with librarians and bring it to the borough library board, get their recommendations and bring it back to the cities."