Looking Ahead to 2011

The Pleasant Valley Library, and all the libraries in Dutchess County, face serious trouble if the County Legislature fails to restore County funding for 2010 (see previous post). But whether or not we are supported by the County, the Pleasant Valley Library will need to do something to be able to operate in anything like its normal fashion in 2011. During the years 2007-2010 money from Town taxes has enabled our Library to be among the leaders in circulation, hours open, and services--although we continue to do so with less than half the staff of libraries with a similar circulation, thanks to our wonderful active corps of volunteers. We will still have the same level of Town funding at least in 2011, but experience has shown that expenses rise every year and that will not be enough. Without additional Town help starting in 2011, we will have to cut services and materials for loans.

New York State library law provides the remedy for this problem. As inflation or expanding population served necessitates increases in a library's budget, the legal remedy for a free-association library is to ask the voters of the Town to increase the funds, based on a law known as Chapter 414. The present 414 funding began in 2007 and was intended to be a level that could last for three years, but we stretched it to four by keeping spending low (the first 414 level was supposed to have lasted for five years, but we managed to keep that level for seven years). So we will have to run a 414 campaign in 2010 for a vote a year from now on a yet-to-be-determined higher level of Town funding.

I saw in the Poughkeepsie Journal this morning that Pleasant Valley Town taxes are already scheduled to rise by 8.9% in 2010. Although a typical 414 increase is considerably less than that--about the cost of one new book per year--you might think that the chances of getting the voters to approve increasing Library funding would be slim. The good news is that people all over the county love their libraries are are willing to keep them operating. In 2009, 24 out of 26 votes for increasing library funding in the Mid-Hudson region passed. The two losses were in Greenport by 18 votes and in Milton by 23 votes. So remember that every single vote is vital.