Henderson City Council members had a frustrating night Wednesday if they sat down with H. Leslie Perry Memorial Library representatives hoping to find the secret formula for library funding.
With the new library at Embassy Square expected to open in March, Henderson and Vance County are faced with paying the operating expenses for a facility that’s more than three times the size of the current library. The library is seeking a boost of slightly more than $98,000 from the city for the coming fiscal year to cover four months in the new building.
That’s a total of $348,417 the library is seeking for the fiscal year that starts July 1, compared with $250,000 this year. And the request will exceed $500,000 for the year that starts July 1, 2006, the first full year in the 38,000-square-foot building that’s being erected on Breckenridge Street.
The total proposed budget for the library for the coming year is about $843,000, but the annual expense starting the next year has consistently been projected at $1.4 million to $1.5 million. As things now stand, almost all of that $600,000 increase would be paid by Henderson and Vance County, and that means the taxpayers of the city and county.
The need for extra library funding is coming at a time when the city isn’t exactly flush with cash, considering that the tax base and job market haven’t recovered from the textile industry’s decline and that Henderson is under pressure to increase its general fund balance.
“The city’s as big a supporter of the library as there is,” City Manager Eric Williams told library director Jeanne Fox and trustees Bennett Perry, Bill Barnett and Tem Blackburn, but the funding is a serious problem.
“This is probably one of the most important initiatives we’ve undertaken because it’s all about education,” Williams said.
“I think it’s going to be the nicest addition to the community that this community has had since I’ve been here,” Barnett said.
Williams and council members Bernard Alston, John Wester, Harriette Butler, Elissa Yount and Lonnie Davis entered Wednesday night’s meeting with the knowledge that much of the discussion about library funding will have to take place between the city and the county. The two local governments aim to pay equal shares of the library’s operating costs each year, an arrangement that Williams and others in the city government have argued is unfair for a facility that operates as the county library.
What Williams wanted Wednesday were ideas on how the library could cut costs or produce extra revenue to ease the burden on taxpayers.
“This is a very serious issue,” Blackburn said with some understatement.
Yount, flanked at the conference room table by Blackburn and Barnett, engaged in an active dialogue with the library board members. Butler was silent. Alston and Davis said little. Wester spoke mostly to clarify or challenge the statements of others.
One by one, most funding ideas were shot down or found to have little short-term value:
* Grants won’t solve the problem because foundations generally don’t give money for standard operational expenses. Literacy grants can and are sought by the Perry Library, but that money goes to new programs, not existing, everyday costs. “I can’t think offhand of any major operational funding sources,” said Blackburn, who also serves as the chairman of the state Library Commission.
* State money won’t fill any gaps for the foreseeable future. In fact, state funding won’t increase at all to cover the new building, so the percentage of the library’s expenses that are funded by the state will decrease from the current 20 percent.
* A fundraising drive to create an endowment would present a possible conflict with ongoing Embassy Square fundraising and might turn off people who are still paying on pledges made toward the library’s construction. “That would take years and years,” Perry said. Besides, Barnett said, the library would need to raise roughly $20 million to produce enough annual income to operate the facility without city or county funds, and no one thinks that’s possible. “I don’t want the job of raising $20 million,” Barnett said. “I don’t think it’s there.” The best hope, Barnett and Yount indicated, would be an endowment that grew over several years to supplement local funding. Yount said she sees an endowment as a crucial element of the library’s funding future.
* Yount suggested contributing the proceeds from the sale of the current library building and land to the library’s endowment. No one commented on that idea Wednesday night. Because the city and county co-own the Rose Avenue site, the county Board of Commissioners would get to decide how to spend half the sale proceeds. And Wester has noted in the past that such unbudgeted revenues automatically go into the city’s general fund balance; it would require an act of the council to pull that money out of the savings account and give it to the nonprofit library foundation — an action that could run into opposition after the criticism the city has faced over its spending on behalf of the Embassy foundation.
* Charging admission or extra fees for library cards would violate the community purpose of the library. “We can’t charge admission,” Barnett said. Williams said there’s reason to hope for some increase in the $2,000 a year budgeted from non-Vance residents who pay to get Perry Library cards, but Barnett said that increase will be a drop in the bucket. “The library by its nature is not a self-sustaining thing,” Perry said.
* The Perry Library could try to become the hub of a state-recognized regional library serving Granville and Warren counties as well as Vance. Blackburn noted that Granville is having trouble finding a location for a library expansion, so the time might be right for a regional system. Fox said the library discussed merging with Warren County’s library seven or eight years ago, but the combination wouldn’t have benefited Vance residents. In any case, a regional structure would take time to establish and wouldn’t address the need for an extra $98,000 in the coming fiscal year.
* The city and county could turn to other institutions with an educational mission to support the library. Barnett specifically mentioned the Vance County Schools and Vance-Granville Community College, although both have their own financial issues and get most of their money from two of the library’s main sources, the county and the state. Yount also mentioned the Franklin-Granville-Vance Partnership for Children.
* Blackburn suggested a sales tax increase, which would spread the burden over more people over more time than a property tax increase. For the same reasons, the school system wants to use a local-option sales tax to finance its school construction needs, but Superintendent Norm Shearin is not optimistic about winning support from the General Assembly. Williams and Wester said a sales tax increase wouldn’t be necessary, just a more equitable distribution of that money by the county.
“I’m trying to look at ways for this revenue other than ad valorem tax,” Yount said. She said she has thought about the problem since October without coming up with any solutions.
If more money isn’t possible, the other option is cutting expenses.
The trustees had no suggestions, arguing that their budget contains no fluff.
Aside from the higher utility costs involved in running the larger library, the increased expenses are largely personnel and technology.
As Williams counted proposed employees, the library wants to add the equivalent of almost 11 full-time employees (part-timers would share many of those positions and would not get health insurance, a rapidly rising expense). Barnett looked at the list and counted nine new full-time equivalents. When facing an issue of hundreds of thousands of dollars, they didn’t bicker over the discrepancy.
Fox explained the need for added personnel in the new library. Because the current facility is small and on a single floor, strategically stationed personnel at the main desk and the reference desk can provide service to the entire library. The new facility will require people stationed on two floors, and the layout will not allow a reference librarian to serve the children’s section at the same time, as happens now.
The bigger facility also will require the part-time maintenance and cleaning person to go full time, Fox said, and instead of having that person serve as a security force during after-school hours, the library will need a full-time security person to protect the facility and its patrons.
Williams said that with the police station across the street from the new library, there might be a way to provide a police presence and secure feeling without hiring a security guard. But Fox said that being across Rose Avenue from the Sheriff’s Office hasn’t eliminated the need for security in the current site.
Fox also explained the need for a full-time computer expert. She said it’s frightening that right now she is the most technologically sound person at the library and has the job of keeping the 17 staff and public computers running properly.
“It’s all I can do sometimes to keep from taking my shoe and bashing it,” Fox said.
The new technology person would take over Fox’s tech-support role and would do much more. The person would maintain a computer lab with 12 computers, 20 other public-access computers, a number of laptop computers available for checkout within the library, the free wireless Internet access available to those and any private laptops brought into the building, all staff computers, six planned multimedia kiosks in the lobby, and a new online system for the library’s resources, for which Fox said the library is getting a $97,000 grant.
In addition, the technology staffer would be asked to run classes in the computer lab and to be a resource for the public.
Fox and Barnett said those computer efforts fit into the vision of the library as an expanded center of lifelong learning. That vision includes new programs that aren’t included in the budget because Fox will seek grants to pay for such initiatives.
Fox has been successful at picking up $5,000 here and $15,000 there for specific programs, Barnett said, although Fox said she prefers not to pursue small grants because the paperwork and administrative headaches are the same as for big grants, just with smaller rewards for the library.
That expanded vision of the library doesn’t work, however, if the library reduces services when it moves into the new building.
“You’re going in the exact opposite of what the Embassy Square Foundation has been telling all the folks who had been getting the money,” Fox said. “I would think the public relations nightmare from something like that would be horrible.”
That’s why Yount was reluctant to raise another possibility for savings: reduced hours or partial use of the new building.
“You normally look at reducing the hours of the library or operational space,” Yount said. “I know operating part of the facility until we have more money would be a blow to the overall project, I agree with that. But I don’t know where we’re going to go.”
“We can’t build a building of adequate size and not adequately fund it,” Barnett said.
Blackburn said it shouldn’t have been a surprise that a building that is three times as large and is on two levels instead of one would be much more expensive to operate. The library board was worried that county officials would be caught off-guard because they aren’t directly involved in the Embassy project. That’s why the library board did a study projecting the operating costs for the first four years in the new building and handed the results over to the city and county early in the process.
Fox said she has heard no complaints from County Manager Jerry Ayscue.
Yount said a penny on the city property tax rate is worth about $64,000, so the library’s funding increase for 2005-06 is equivalent to about 1.5 cents. The added cost of a full year in the new facility is equal to 4 to 5 cents for every $100 worth of taxable real estate in Henderson.
“The way I see it, if we don’t have endowment, we don’t have grants, we don’t have the money, it’s either raise the taxes, cut operation hours, or use less of the facility until the city’s in better financial condition,” Yount said.
Barnett said the library board can’t decide whether the City Council should pull money from other departments or should raise taxes to fund library operations. The board can only say what the library needs.
“We think it would be hard to imagine that $7.5 million would have been raised … and that the city and the county would be unable to find the funds to fund the operation once the facility has been built,” Barnett said.
He said the library board ultimately would like to expand the hours of operation beyond the current 61 hours per week. If the city wants to cut those hours, Barnett said, city officials will have to go to the public and explain.
Yount said that could be part of the solution. If the public followed the example of other counties that cut library hours and expressed outrage, the council might have the necessary support to raise taxes.
Blackburn advised the council to take a long-term view. In addition to bringing in consultants to address the city’s financial problems, he advised looking beyond the coming year for a tax increase. If higher taxes are necessary for the library, he said, the city should be upfront about how taxes will rise each year. The alternative, raising taxes to balance the budget in fiscal 2005-06, then doing the same thing 12 months later, will only anger people, Blackburn said.
“The prudent thing to do is to take these numbers seriously and look for the help you need,” Blackburn said.
“I feel duly chastised,” Yount said.
But she said health and safety issues, such as the sewer system, have to take priority over the library.
“We are in a dilemma that does not provide any easy or ready answers,” Yount said.
“This is our task, and this is the task we signed up for,” Davis said.