Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Library Funding topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Canby library director warns budget squeeze as city support lags
Summary
At a Canby library advisory board meeting, Director Marissa said internal allocated costs increasingly outpace city operational support and urged residents to submit targeted comments ahead of budget decisions and LDAC review.
At a meeting of the Canby Library Advisory Board, Director Marissa told members that internal allocated charges and rising costs mean the library may need to cut services unless city contributions increase and community advocacy strengthens.
Marissa reviewed three years of annual progress reports required by the IGA and highlighted several internal cost lines: facilities charges rose from about $64,000 to $91,000 and at one point exceeded $100,000 before being negotiated down to $83,000; tech services moved from roughly $23,000 to $65,000, dipped, and this year are “more like 89,000,” she said. She added that “this current fiscal year we’re getting 305,000 and our allocated costs are over 400,000,” noting the gap between the city’s operational support and the library’s internal charges.
Why it matters: the board must submit three annual progress reports to the district advisory committee (LDAC). Those reports detail city population, revenue and expenditure items, OLA-threshold compliance and other metrics the district uses to evaluate funding and services. Marissa said the IGA requires cooperation among participating cities and that the new OLA standards have become more specific and more expensive to meet.
Board members pressed for context and advocacy steps. One committee member urged the board to “start screaming louder” to make the city aware of service strain; another asked Marissa to prepare a short scenario list showing what services would be reduced if the library received $50,000 or $100,000 less than requested. Marissa agreed to include members’ comments in the IGA report submission and promised to draft a list the board can use for outreach.
The board also discussed concrete outreach tactics for the upcoming budget cycle: drafting short, intentional template emails for residents to send to the city council, encouraging three-minute public comments at budget meetings, and posting service metrics publicly so community members can visualize impacts (for example, hold queues and wait times). “If people don’t know, they’re not talking about it,” one member said; Marissa said that community feedback is a key driver of city budget priorities.
Other items: Marissa previewed bimonthly service statistics—digital checkouts and reference interactions are increasing while some circulation dipped during holiday closures—and outlined new grant-driven career-center metrics she will add to the packet. She also reported an accessibility-signage installation funded by an American Library Association grant and described participation in a regional community-reads program featuring George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy.
Next steps: the board scheduled a joint meeting with the Friends group, the library foundation and the Canby Kiwanis for Monday, Feb. 2, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m.; each group was asked to prepare five slides describing its work and needs. Marissa said the February board meeting will review the new OLA standards and present a staff plan to address items not yet met, subject to budget constraints.
The meeting concluded with board members thanking staff for detailed reports and for outlining the tradeoffs ahead of the budget cycle.
