Library district vote coming

POLSON - North county voters will be presented again this year with the option of approving the formation of a north county library district.

A hearing last week with the Lake County Commission cleared the initiative for a ballot. The North Lake County Library District Steering Committee then decided it will put the question to vote with a mail-in ballot. If cleared by the county, ballots will go out on July 27.

Polson City Library is struggling to maintain services during the current recession, Library Board of Trustee members say.

The nearly 100-year-old library has no money to buy books or DVDs, and saw its budget cut by almost 15 percent this year, Library Board President Jackie Gran said. Other programs and operations hours are at risk of being cut if more funding is not secured, she said.

Formation of the North Lake County Public Library District would bring in surrounding areas as a tax base to help fund the library. Boundaries of the new district would include Polson, Valley View, Big Arm, Elmo, Protor-Dayon, Rollins and East Shore to Yellow Bay. Ballots will be sent to all registered voters in these areas. The library district could levy up to a maximum of 11.14 mills in those areas.

Library statistics show that 61 percent of its registered users reside outside the Polson city limits.

The Polson City Library, as it stands now, is a department of the city. All its funding comes from the general fund.

Gran fears that the continued budget crunches will force more services to be cut.

"I think that it's fair to say there's some risk to the survival," she said.

The first attempt in November 2008 to form the library district failed by just more than 120 votes.

"I think it was lack of information. There was some confusion," Gran said. "We used the term ‘high school' district, they thought that [the library] would be at the high school. I would say we didn't reach out enough."

This time around the board and library district steering committee are offering to speak to anyone and everyone on the improvements they believe the stabilized funding will bring.

A PowerPoint presentation has been set up to show statistics, one of which says the average amount for a library Polson's size spent in the last year on books is $30,000. Polson has spent $15,000 for collection materials since 1992.

A brochure published by the committee shows that with the increased mills, a home with a market value of $200,000 would see a $41.20 increase in a yearly tax bill.

"We are not minimizing the tax, but we're equating it with buying a latte or something," Gran said.

Volunteers and donations, which make up 35 percent of the library's income source, have helped the library maintain most of its services.

Volunteer coordinator Bonnie Triepke points to the extension electronic resource the library offers as a vital resources during hard economic times.

All of these components - from access to the Internet to online databases like InfoTrac - could be cut if more funding is not secured. Resources like this have seen expanded use in the past several years.

She believes that those pennies-a-day could help not just the library, but every part of the community.

"It's definitely an investment in the future, for all age groups. . . It's not just a childhood library. The library has so much more to offer as far as links with technology," Triepke said.

Steering committee member Jake Block said nearly 300 people use just the library's Internet services each week.

"This is probably one of the most critical times to make sure the services to the community are available to all in the community," Block said.