The St. Albert Public Library has avoided a funding cut next year after council passed a motion to leave the library's budget stagnant for the third straight year.
As previously reported by The Gazette, the city's proposed 2023 budget included a $500,000 per year for three years funding cut to St. Albert's public library, but on Nov. 8, Mayor Cathy Heron submitted a motion to remove the cut from the budget.
Heron's motion to remove the impending cut from the 2023 budget passed with only Coun. Shelley Biermanski opposed during the Dec. 1 council deliberation meeting.
"We're very pleased, the board and I, and probably our supporters and library patrons are pleased that council has voted to keep the library at a zero growth level," said Peter Bailey, the library's CEO in an interview on Dec. 2.
Two full-time employees have already had their positions terminated as a result of stagnant funding, Bailey told The Gazette in November. As of Jan. 1, the library will no longer have a digital services librarian, and will also lose a cataloguing and processing assistant.
The digital services librarian, Bailey said, was in charge of the library's online services, such as streaming, e-books, and audiobooks.
"We're working on reassigning her responsibilities to other staff, so the implications of that ... means there'll be delays in some of our processes," Bailey said.
The stagnant funding level will also require the library to continue with reduced service hours, and downsize the collection available to users, library board co-chair Colleen McClure told council during a meeting in early November.
“We've made zero growth budgets work with difficulties over the last three years. We will make a zero budget work again in 2023,” McClure said.
In an interview, Heron said she knows how important the public library is to St. Albert, and was pleased to see the motion to not cut the library's funding be passed.
"I strongly believe that what the library delivers as a service to the city of St. Albert is very close to an essential service," Heron said. "It's relied on by a heavy amount of St. Albertans."
"I was appreciative of the fact that the library kind of met us in the middle," she said, referencing the library board's decision to revise their funding request for next year from $4,562,000 to $4,348,900, which is the same amount the library had this year.
"I think it was a win-win for everybody."
As the lone opposition vote, Biermanski says it was a difficult decision to make, but she was hoping council and the library could have met more in the middle.
In the proposed budget, the $500,000 per year funding cut for the library was deduced from their original 2023 funding request of $4,562,000, so Heron's motion to keep the library's funding at a stagnant level required $286,000, rather than $250,000, be added to the library's 2023 budget, Biermanski explained in an interview.
“That was a really, really difficult vote for me and I understand that the library is very, very important to people and it was just (me) trying to find some avenues that we could provide a (lower) tax increase,"Biermanski said.
Bailey said the library appreciates that council has to make difficult decisions every year in order to keep property tax increases manageable.
"We feel that we are taking our responsibilities seriously in playing our part in addressing some of the challenges that council has, so we do thank them for their for their decision to maintain funding," he said.
Coun. Sheena Hughes told The Gazette she expects the library to continue finding organizational efficiencies in the years to come, as was done with the two recently terminated staff positions.
"I expect to see the additional efficiencies that were outlined in the organization review be brought forward in the upcoming years," Hughes said, referencing the internal audit report council commissioned for the library earlier this year.
"Next year and onward until they are implemented as possible based on the recommendations," Hughes said.
The passing of the motion represents 0.2 per cent of the 2023 property tax rate increase of about 5.8 per cent. Council will vote to approve the 2023 budget on Dec. 20.
