Area libraries rely heavily on local support

Public libraries in Carbon County are on a mission to educate the community about where their money comes from.

It doesn't come from local taxes. Unlike public libraries in Lehigh and Monroe counties, which are supported in large part by a local tax base, there is no annual tax to support Carbon County libraries.

Instead, a small but critical portion of the money needed to run Carbon County's public libraries comes from a mix of state and municipality funds. Private donations and fundraisers make up the bulk of local libraries' budgets.

"A lot of people are under the perception that libraries are like the borough, that they're funded by taxes. That's not true," said Diane Danielson, director of the Palmerton Area Public Library. "You never know how much money you're going to get every year. It's very tough to make up a budget when you don't know how much money you're going to get."

Danielson came to Palmerton nine years ago, when libraries across the state first received notice of drastic cuts in state funding under Gov. Ed Rendell.

"It was almost cut it half. It was terrible," she said. "It's slowly come back up to what it was under Gov. Ridge."

But accepting state funds brings stipulations. State funding laws mandate that libraries gather a certain level of local funding from local municipalities and fundraisers each year.

The Palmerton and Jim Thorpe public libraries must aim to gather more than $5 for every person living in their distribution area or risk losing or reduced state funding. That's approximately $70,000 for Palmerton and $90,000 for Jim Thorpe. (Lehighton has been granted a waiver from this requirement in past years due to the number of residents below the poverty line, although Wanamaker noted that waivers are not guaranteed each year.) This amount must be gathered annually through local government and school district contributions, investments, donations, book sales and other fundraisers. In Palmerton, approximately 60 percent of their $200,000 annual budget comes from donations and fundraisers.

Further funding regulations make it difficult for libraries to control their costs. To be eligible for state funding, libraries must be open to the public a set number of hours each week and at least six hours each weekend.

There are two tiers of state funding. To maintain the highest level of state funding, as the Palmerton Area Public Library has done, the library must meet even higher requirements when it comes to staffing, hours open, and circulation.

"In your own house if you have major expenses, you cut back in other areas," said Danielson. "We can't do that. If we cut back we lose our state funding."

To maintain their level of state funding, Palmerton must spend at least 12 percent of its annual budget (approximately $24,000) on books and movies. They must also keep an active subscription to 50 periodicals.

"If our expenditures go up, for example if our furnace breaks, we have to spend more on books as well," she said. "There are a lot of things that go into making the budget, and things are very iffy."