GRAND RAPIDS — Frustration on both sides began to show during a half-hour special meeting of the Itasca County Board focused on library funding Tuesday, July 29.
Outgoing library Director Will Richter and Grand Rapids Mayor Tasha Connelly worked through a stack of papers, answering questions the commissioners had submitted: Have you considered changing your hours of operation? What cost-saving measures have you implemented? What do employees make?
The meeting is the latest non-action in the last two months of discussion about how to fund the Grand Rapids Area Library. It’s also the last where Richter will represent the library. He’s moving to a new role with the city, and Assistant Library Director Amy Dettmer will assume his title.
The city of Grand Rapids first presented a new funding agreement in late May, which would split library funding evenly between the county and city. Grand Rapids funds the vast majority of the library budget, but less than half of the usage is from city residents.
The city said it can’t sustain that level of funding and needs to make cuts. But it wants the county to foot more of the bill, so the city’s cuts won’t hurt service levels.
Commissioners Casey Venema and John Johnson, who represent the other five libraries in the county, have been the most vocal skeptics.
“I’m completely 100% against all of this,” Venema said Tuesday. “ ... My constituents in my district are against this, the majority.”
Online misinformation about the budget issue is frustrating, Venema said, because the board wouldn’t be cutting the library budget; they just may not increase it.
“What happened to cause the facility to go from positive cash flow of $73,000 to where we sit now with a significant shortfall?” Johnson asked.
“That would have been the constraints placed by the City Council,” Richter said, referring to the proposed budget cuts.
Johnson and Venema agreed that there needs to be a stand-alone committee or other collaboration to figure out a solution, and Venema said it should only include two county commissioners.
The city proposed a joint powers agreement at the recommendation of County Attorney Jacob Fauchald earlier this month to provide a venue for more discussion, which would have included two representatives or staff from the city and two from the county.
But the board pulled the agreement from its July 15 agenda, saying they wanted more time before entering a formal agreement.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Johnson questioned why a joint powers agreement was needed and said he didn’t feel good about it because some of his concerns “seem to have fallen somewhat flat.”
“I think there’s opportunity here for some fantastic conversations to be had about problem solving and troubleshooting, and I’m not sure we need another bureaucratic document to solve this problem,” he said.
“I just want to follow the rules,” Connelly explained. “ ... So, I defer to the [legal] experts on that. ... They went to school for a long time to figure that out, what the rules are.”
Venema and Johnson said they wanted the city, as the owner of the library, to take the lead on figuring out the next steps.
After the meeting, in the hallway outside the boardroom, Connelly told Fauchald that she’d have City Attorney Chad Sterle reach out so the two could discuss other options.
Fauchald said the situation was a “head scratcher,” because there are few options for public bodies to have formal discussions about budgeting and the like.
Connelly has previously expressed concern about deadlines. The city and county have to have their budgets finished by the end of September.
“My hope is if we’re able to form a group that’s actually not trying to fit all this in in a very short period of time that we can come up with a really long-range solution that is not just like a bandage,” Connelly told the board Tuesday.
Commissioner Terry Snyder said if the county were to provide additional money for the library, it would need to increase its tax levy. That decision doesn’t “happen overnight.”
“We truly appreciate the people that showed up at the last meeting, the 200 and some that are passionate supporters of the library system,” Snyder said, referring to supporters packing the boardroom in May.
“But on the other hand, our due diligence is, we represent 45,000 people, most of them outside of the city limits of Grand Rapids, so part of what we need to do is to have further discussions with our constituents.”
Despite his skepticism, Johnson reaffirmed his support for the library. The Coleraine and Grand Rapids libraries are in his district.
“All of you know, I hope, how passionately I support this library, up to and including, when given the opportunity, providing volunteer hours myself and then participating in some wonderful activities,” he said. “I don’t want to see it go away."
