Colfax librarian asks Dunn County committee for $5,161 to cover 2025 shortfall; committee tables decision

The Colfax Village librarian told the Dunn County Community Resources & Tourism Committee that the Colfax Library faces a $5,161 shortfall for the 2025 budget year after receiving more than $16,000 less in county funding than the prior year, and asked the committee to consider one-time help.

The request came during the committee’s public comment period when Lisa Hurlber, identified as the Colfax librarian, said the library serves both village residents (about 1,200 people) and township residents who cross municipal lines to use the facility. “We ended up getting, over 16,000 less from the county than we did last year,” Hurlber said, adding the village and library have already cut what they can and still face “a shortfall of about $5,161.”

The library’s appeal matters to the committee because Colfax’s municipal budget is small and the library also provides services beyond lending books — Hurlber listed telehealth meetings, story time, summer reading and other community supports that she said are largely funded by grants or volunteer effort. Gary Stifel, who identified himself as a Dunn County board member and a Colfax Village representative, accompanied Hurlber and emphasized that the library’s role extends to filling local service gaps after the loss of a clinic, dentist and pharmacy.

County staff described two procedural paths for addressing the request. Dan (county staff/administrator) told the committee the library could seek contingency funds administered by the Committee on Administration or pursue a budget adjustment to draw on county fund balance: “you realistically could make a request for contingency funds,” he said, and “the other option would be to do a … budget adjustment, which would be asking to utilize fund balance to … pay for that.”

Tricia (county finance/administration staff) provided figures about the contingency fund: “the amount of the contingency fund is a 125,000, and we spent about $86,000 of that last year,” she said, and noted the 2025 contingency allocation is $125,000 with none spent so far this year. Committee members discussed the trade-offs of using contingency money in January versus making a full budget adjustment to be approved by the full county board.

Supervisors opened discussion and weighed options. Supervisor Quinn moved to postpone a final decision and make the request an action item for the next committee meeting so administration could present funding-path options; the motion was seconded and approved. The committee recorded the item as an action item for the next meeting and asked administration to return with recommended next steps — either a contingency request to Committee on Administration or a budget-adjustment proposal using fund balance.

The committee did not grant funds immediately. The motion to table was approved without a recorded roll-call tally in the transcript; the committee instructed staff to prepare written options and to place the Colfax request on the next meeting agenda.

Next steps: administration will prepare a written recommendation that identifies funding sources and the procedural path (contingency request vs. budget adjustment) and the committee will consider the item as an action item at its next meeting.