What does a bricks-and-mortar library mean in these days of Internet information overload?
That’s a question La Plata County commissioners are asking as they enter the budget process for 2015 and analyze the viability of keeping satellite public libraries open at Fort Lewis Mesa and Sunnyside elementary schools.
“We’re looking at everything, not just the libraries,” Commissioner Julie Westendorff said. “We want to know, ‘Is this still relevant?’ ‘Is this still worth La Plata County’s dollars?’”
The numbers would say yes, as circulation numbers and reference requests are up significantly over the past decade. But numbers don’t tell the whole story.
“This is our community center,” David Longan said of Sunnyside’s library. “Any time we need a resource, they bend over backward to support us. Closing it would be wildly unpopular.”
Mary Bates is one of the leaders of a Cub Scout troop that meets in the Sunnyside library every Tuesday.
“It would be a real challenge for us to continue without the library,” she said. “We’re in the middle of a computer unit on Internet safety, and there’s no way we could do something like that in someone’s home. Ten 8-year-old boys is tough in anyone’s home.”
Ever since the Eureka Grange was torn down a couple of years ago for the widening of U.S. Highway 550, the only community meeting places in the area are the library and the Florida Grange, but Bates says that grange is so busy, it would be hard to get a time to meet.
Longan, who said everyone in his family is a heavy Sunnyside Library user, said his homeowner’s association and water board meet there as well.
“It’s a 30-mile drive into town for our patrons, and just the gas costs $7,” Fort Lewis Mesa manager Chris Conrad said. “When you go in and have all these errands and a car full of cranky kids, you don’t want to go to the library, you just want to go home.”
The libraries are busy with summer reading programs for students, with 79 youngsters enrolled in the Sunnyside program alone this summer. They also offer adult reading clubs and other community programs.
Conrad’s library sees a lot of Internet use because many homes don’t have a computer or don’t have Internet access in the southwest corner of the county.
“We had eight people using the computers already today,” she said on a school day, “and we’re open another couple of hours. One person was making a hotel reservation for the weekend, some kids who are home-schooled were doing their homework and one man was filing some unemployment paperwork.”
Durango Pubic Library recently conducted user surveys at both libraries to give commissioners a better understanding of why the libraries matter to the two communities.
And Bates, who is getting ready to teach her Cub Scouts about civic involvement, is going to ask them to write letters to the commissioners.
Complicated financial picture
The satellite libraries are funded by the county but managed by the Durango Public Library, DPL Director Andy White said. Durango School District 9-R provides the space, utilities and Internet access, a particularly valuable service in rural La Plata County, where broadband access is spotty at best.
The annual library budget for the county is about $113,000, County Manager Joe Kerby said, with about $53,600 going to Fort Lewis Mesa and just over $60,000 to Sunnyside. That pays for a manager to run each branch from 2 to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and the purchase of materials for young adults and adults.
The school district purchases the children’s collection and pays for a librarian during school hours.
The satellite branches can also draw from the Durango Public Library’s collections in an inner-system interlibrary-loan program.
“It’s easy to say it’s only $110,000 in a $70 million budget,” Westendorff said. “But that $110,000 could be significant in some other department’s budget.”
Kerby thinks property tax revenues hit bottom in 2014 and will begin rebounding in 2015, which will help.
“All the numbers are very preliminary, because we’re just getting started,” county Finance Director Diane Sorensen said. “But we’re projecting the general fund will be up $2 million in 2015 over 2014. We’ll have better numbers at the end of November.”
Not a done deal
Both Kerby and Westendorff said the budget is in its earliest stages and the closure of the libraries is by no means already determined.
“For me, personally, people calling in or writing and saying they love their library is very persuasive,” Westendorff said, “and saying it’s a community resource just adds value. We’ve gotten as much feedback on this issue as any budget line item in the two years I’ve been a commissioner.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
Library user survey results (PDF)
If you go
La Plata County Commissioners will hold an On the Road meeting at 7 p.m. Oct. 13 at the Marvel Grange, 217 County Road 133A.
They will get their first look at the draft 2015 county budget Oct. 14.
