We’ve seen this movie before – just last year, in fact – the one where the towns of southern Orange and the board of county commissioners square off over library funding.
Chapel Hill, whose library is open to all residents of Orange County, has long sought an increase in county support, which has fallen over the past 15 years from 20 percent of the library’s budget to 11 percent. Over the same time, the library has grown to become the state’s busiest.
The subject of county support was part of an extensive back-and-forth at the most recent Assembly of Governments meeting. And though there is a lot of consensus on what could be done, the reality is that this year – again – there won’t be funds to do much.
While the town’s fiscal challenges are many, the pressures on the county this year are even greater.
The state budget looks grim. There is massive deficit in Medicaid funding — $250 million and growing – and that will have consequences at the local level. This is also going to be another year of strain on the county’s social services. Orange County may have one of the state’s highest per capita incomes, but the percentage of people in poverty is about equal to the state average. Here, as it is elsewhere, the need for assistance is growing. Consequently, a big increase in library funding from the county is probably not going to happen.
That leaves Chapel Hill in a pickle. Town Manager Roger Stancil has said interest rates and capital markets are favorable for the library expansion — a project approved by voters in 2003. As a result, the building can be built without a tax increase. Staffing and maintaining a library more than twice the size of the existing one is another story, adding about $775,000 in annual costs.
Monday night, as the Chapel Hill Town Council discussed the proposed library expansion, Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt acknowledged that the county is not likely to fill that gap. He suggested the town look for a kind of down payment this year and a promise of a steady increase.
Council members also discussed a few familiar options, including approaching other governments and the possibility of charging an annual fee for library services.
Like last year and years before, we suspect that the council will look hard at the fee, but not make the leap. Still, it is unfair to force the full cost of a library expansion driven in part by patrons from elsewhere on the Chapel Hill taxpayer.
It makes sense to attempt to cobble together funds from a variety of sources, including grants, local governments and schools as well as look for ways to reduce the new operating costs driven by the expansion.
Meanwhile, planning a long-term, coordinated strategy on libraries ought to take place outside the yearly budget wrangling. Libraries fill too important a role in the community to only be discussed when it’s time for the ax to fall.