‘Careful surgery’ used to develop library’s budget

The library has completed a proposal for next year’s budget. Alberta libraries are independent but reliant on the municipality for most funding so we are following the process used by city departments. This actually requires us to create a budget for the next four years. Hopefully reality won’t have other plans which differ too radically from what we envision.

The city has an approach called Financially Fit for the Future which responds to an overreliance on utilities revenue and a resulting shortfall caused by decreased commodity pricing. The library’s part has been to contain costs by finding internal efficiencies, and to find some savings by considering and adjusting service levels. Some parts of Financially Fit are not applicable to the library’s plan, such as “Property Tax Adjustments.” I wish that was in my toolbox! On second thought, imagining the resulting phone calls, perhaps I’m glad the option isn’t open to me.

One possibility was to raise user fees. Library fees are limited by legislation so it would be difficult for us to raise much more money. Library service is free in most provinces and the trend in Alberta libraries is to charge less, not more. With this in mind, the library decided to forgo any extra user fee revenue.

Regarding internal efficiencies, the library is in the happy position of not carrying debt for the renovation of our film theatre. We thought we would pay for several years but the community gave us enough through fundraising to pay it off (thank you for that). The savings will go towards increased utility costs and other unavoidable increases.

The library will use city funding for existing operations only. That money will go to keeping the lights on and the doors open. We hope to do some new things for the community, but any new costs will have to be covered by fundraising.

Regarding service levels, the library is considering shaving open hours a little to deliver a cost reduction. This is not a step we take lightly, but it seems appropriate given the parameters we’ve been given to work in. I’m not sure what form an hours reduction will take, but we will figure that out towards the end of the year once the budget is finalized. The resulting cut to staff hours should happen through attrition — that detail was very important for me.

I wouldn’t call this budget good news but from what I’ve seen, the city’s process and approach is prudent and measured. Cutting costs is not fun, but the emphasis I’ve seen is on careful surgery and not indiscriminate hacking. We are not out of the woods yet but I hope that the library will get through this without too much damage being done.

Ken Feser is chief librarian at the Medicine Hat Public Library.