The Elizabeth Taber Library is seeking a 25 percent increase in funding for Fiscal Year 2021, according to the budget presented to the Marion Financial Committee at its March 4 meeting at Town Hall.
While Town Administrator Jay McGrail informed FinCom that the library’s original request for funding could not fit into Marion’s balanced budget, what was presented to FinCom on March 5 does.
“They worked pretty hard to get to where they are today. There was significant give and take… so I don’t want the committee and the board to think this is where we started. We did quite a bit of work to get to what was presented to you,” McGrail told FinCom.
According to McGrail, the town approves part of the library’s budget and funds a portion of the library’s budget through one line item in the town budget. The library has other revenue sources to establish other parts of its budget.
“The library employees are public employees, so I think people should be aware… We own the building, too,” said FinCom Chairman Peter Winters.
“We own the building and we maintain the building, and that’s separate from the (library) budget,” McGrail reiterated.
Jennifer Jones, the president of the Board of Trustees of the Elizabeth Taber Library, presented the budget to FinCom. Jones said that Library Director Liz Sherry was unable to attend due to illness.
Jones noted that the Taber Library is among only a handful that are not entirely funded by their towns, heightening the importance of establishing alternative revenue sources.
In 2020, Marion contributed $171,090 to library funding and, if approved, will in 2021 contribute $213,460. Together with donations, fundraising events, grants, fees and fines, and investment income, the library projected a total of $303,443 in income for 2021 against $261,837 for 2020.
Expenses also increased from $261,267 in 2020 to a projected $303,070 for 2021. The lion’s share of the hike in expenses is in payroll and taxes, where the library will spend $211,426 in 2021, an increase of $42,542 over $168,884 in 2020.
Jones presented comparative data from 2018, demonstrating that the library takes 0.6 percent of the town budget in Marion, which is significantly less than what library budgets take up in other towns.
The state’s average appropriation in 2018 for towns ranging in population from 4,000 to 6,000 was $357,000; in 2018, the Elizabeth Taber Library received a $163,000 appropriation.
Marion Assistant Town Administrator Judy Mooney pointed out that the library is better supported than those numbers suggest.
“Keep in mind, part of the facilities budget, $14,300, is appropriated for the library,” said Mooney. “The other piece is town insurance… that, too, is part of the general fund. Electricity, that comes out of the town utility budget.”
Mooney estimates such “extras” raise town support of the library to “a little over $200,000.”
Jones says the library is up to four fundraising events per year, reinforcing the difference between Marion and other towns.
“We’ve experienced explosive growth,” said Jones, stating that patronage of the Taber Library has jumped by 100 percent over the past year. Circulation has jumped approximately 30 percent.
Sherry, according to Jones, has done wonderful things in her first year on the job. Jones listed many library programs addressing the needs of seniors and teenagers. “The public computers are used heavily by seniors,” she said.
The library’s eight-person staff includes two full-time employees with benefits packages, the library director at 35 hours per week, and the children’s librarian at 30.
Six part-time employees average 2.5 days per week and are subject to a high rate of turnover due to a lack of career-growth pathways and low wages.
Staff limitations impact weekends, according to Jones, a safety concern when the library is staffed with only one employee.
“We have also had incidents with very challenging patrons,” explained Jones. “I think we’ve had two incidents this year. One was an ongoing incident in which we had to put in a restraining order.”
A library associate/senior technician starts at $14 per hour at Taber, with the potential to eventually earn $16 per hour. In 2018, the average minimum hourly wage across the state for the same position was $18.55.
“Now we are just asking for a very modest increase just to stay in step with the increase in minimum wage this year,” said Jones.
For FY2021, the library is requesting a full-time employee with benefits at $31,915 and raises for part-timers in step with the projected minimum wage increase over the next three years.
Jones was asked if she could foresee any circumstances, on top of success with the library’s FY2021 budgeting request, coming back in a year with the request for an additional full-time employee.
“I would not anticipate that in the next year or two years or so,” she said. “As I said we would be coming back with the requests for the step-up for the part-time employees, but I think having an additional full-time employee would lend tremendous amount of consistency in the services that we offer, our ability to apply for more grants, and we’d be able to hire someone who has had some experience with that sort of thing as well.”
Winters thanked Jones for all the work done by the Library.
“The Library, obviously, it’s a great asset to the town and you guys do a wonderful job there,” he said.
Capital Improvement Planning Committee Chairman Paul Naiman appeared at McGrail’s request, and took the opportunity to explain the CIPC, a committee that has been in place for approximately 10 years.
“What we do, our role here, we don’t approve capital plans, our role is to organize them,” said Naiman, addressing FinCom. He said that their role was to ask a battery of questions, including project description, cost, funding source, reason (i.e. to meet a regulation, for safety, as a replacement, an improved capability, efficiency), the life of the project, and whether it would fit with Master Plan priorities.
“It helps us understand as a town what’s coming up. It helps them plan for their upcoming years for what they… need for their capital projects or items,” he said. “We take each project and we evaluate it. The idea is to be as objective as possible… try to take out our opinions.”
Points are assigned for each question, and the CIPC’s seven members submit scores and an average is created. The idea is to minimize the impact on the rate payers.
For instance, the Community Center furnace has failed, and electric space heaters were used this winter to heat the kitchen space. It is now in the capital plan.
McGrail considers the following projects essential: the town’s main street sewer assessment on Front Street; the emergency connection to water in Wareham; an upgraded phone system at Sippican School; and a six-wheel truck. McGrail told FinCom that for the first time Marion is working on including the school resource officer at Old Rochester in the school assessment.
In its next meeting scheduled for March 11, FinCom was expecting to hear from DPW Director David Willett for a second look at water and sewer expenses.
Facility improvements at the Council on Aging were discussed.
The minutes from FinCom’s last two meetings on Feb. 12 and Feb. 26 were approved.
FinCom expects to meet every Wednesday night at Town House through April 1.
Marion Financial Committee
By Mick Colageo