Scott County libraries plan for cuts ahead

After a near-death experience this fall, with open discussion of closing one or more branches, the Scott County library system is quietly at work on a strategic plan to help it decide what to stop doing if the county's finances get even more strained next year.

"What are our central, core services?" asked the system's director, Vanessa Birdsey. "What is essential to being a library? Do we have to provide online access? Early childhood literacy? A welcoming place for people to come? What are the things we will do well and others we might not put as much effort into?"

Once the system's board and staff offer their opinions, she said, citizens will be invited into the process in the early months of next year.

Lurking behind the planning is a widespread feeling that, with housing values continuing to drop, dragging down tax proceeds, things are likely to get worse before they get better -- even though the county has already had to cut about $3 million from its budget this year.

"I don't think any of us thinks this is a one-year scenario," said County Commissioner Barbara Marschall, of Prior Lake.

Key variables, said County Administrator Dave Unmacht, will be the state's financial picture in the months to come and decisions in the next legislative session about aid to local government.

After a majority of the County Board last week beat back a proposal to drive more money into roads, which would have meant even less money available for parks and libraries, the library system wound up with a relatively modest cut: $35,000 for next year.

Fortunately, she said, under the leadership of then-library director Janet Williams, who is now the mayor of Savage, the city and county during the boom times worked hard to install a much-upgraded infrastructure. Several cities built new libraries or expanded the old ones.

Trying to avoid closures

Notable exceptions, now caught in the downdraft, include Jordan, which had to rip out shelving in overcrowded circumstances even as the population was rising, and Elko New Market, still operating out of a pole barn -- though with more space than when it shared that structure with city government.

Now the system sits with new, high-quality facilities in the north, but just a few minutes apart from one another, and more basic facilities in the smaller rural communities to the south, separated from one another by much longer drives.

Library officials in some other states are "just floored" to hear that Scott County used to have a library in a city as small as 600 people, Birdsey said. Californians have told her they are proud to have real libraries, not just Bookmobiles, in cities as small as 12,000.

Indeed the county hopes to build more, not close some. It's working with both Elko New Market and Jordan to explore whether to combine new senior housing developments with libraries, even if only temporarily. "Both cities are thinking in the future of combined city halls and libraries in the same building," she said, "which is a great idea. Sharing things like meeting rooms really helps. That's expensive space."

It was clear from the County Board's discussion that the needs libraries fulfill in tough economic times -- providing things like magazines and Internet to people who have to cut their own subscriptions or stop paying for broadband Internet service -- helped ease the cuts expected from them this time around.

But folks in some parts of the county are seeing big drops in the value of their homes, and they will also be expecting to pay less in taxes. And it remains to be seen how much the library's budget will be affected.

"It was very hard in the very recent past to move from a rural to a more suburban system," doing many of the same things as much bigger and more richly funded counties nearby, Birdsey said. "That took big changes. And we may need some more next year."