I recently returned from vacation, but while I was away Patrick Wade wrote a blog post on the News Gazette blog being critical of the Champaign Library Trustees for the $200 Fee charged to Tolono and Mahomet Library District residents.

Here is what Patrick wrote on his July 18th blog:

I know a lot of readers have been waiting for an update on what's going on with the $200 user fee for residents of the Mahomet and Tolono (Savoy) library districts. When it first approved of the fee last year, the board said it would review the policy after six months.

That six months expired in May, when the board took up the issue and heard from opposed library users (or maybe I should call them library non-users -- not since the fee was imposed, anyway).

On that night, they failed to make a decision either way, and the issue was tabled. The board met again in June, but the nonresident fee was not on the agenda. They are scheduled to meet this Thursday, but again, it does not appear the fee will come up.

I just got off the phone with assistant library director Mary Bissey, who gave me an update today on where it stands. The update is that there's nothing new to report. "Things are status quo as far as the reciprocal borrowing is concerned," she said.

"We know that we have to get back to it," she acknowledged, but it's still unclear when that might be. It won't be Thursday (Bissey said Thursday's agenda is too long and filled with other substantive items, like a deal with the Urbana Free Library to purchase and share an automation system). And there's no way of telling yet if it will appear on the August agenda.

Either way, I'll keep an eye on it.

One of my favorite things is being a Trustee for the Champaign Public Library. 

As a Trustee, it is my opinion that we are entrusted with the fiduciary duty of caring for the property taxes paid by the citizens of Champaign for the purpose of providing a public library.  A lot goes into this - maintaining a modern and desirable collection of materials that are available to lend to the public, maintaining the physical structure of the library, providing reasonable access to those materials to the citizens of Champaign - but not the least of which is ensuring that the organization runs according to a budget and within the boundaries of the property taxes collected from the residents of Champaign.

Over the past year, one of the toughest decisions we had to make was to institute the $200 Fee for residents of the Tolono and Mahomet Library Districts.  A detailed analysis showed that the Champaign Library was being used as the home library for residents of the Tolono and Mahomet Library Districts, with borrowings from the Champaign Library far in excess of borrowings from their home Library.  Tolono Residents borrowed about 100,000 items from their home library while borrowing about 170,000 items from the Champaign Library and Mahomet residents borrowed about 87,000 from Champaign compared to about 100,000 from Mahomet.  Their usage of the Champaign Library without contributing financially to its operation was putting a burden on the staff and the collection that was not fair to the tax payers of Champaign. As such, the board was compelled to take action to protect the property tax payers of Champaign.

Due to the real estate crisis and it's associated impact on property tax revenues, we currently have open 15 vacancies (this is public record as it is discussed in the Trustee's meetings).  The implementation of the user fee reduced Champaign Library usage somewhere shy of 10% - this is a critical impact given the staffing situation.  If usage was not curtailed by those who do not pay for it, then service levels to the property tax payers of Champaign would have negatively been impacted - a situation that I as a Trustee find untenable.

I can only hope the tone of Patrick's blog post means he hadn't had a chance to look at the situation trough the eyes of someone who feels a responsibility to the property tax payers of Champaign to provide them with the best possible Library for the hard earned dollars they entrust to us as Trustees.

For a detailed explanation of the fee, you can visit the Champaign Library's website at:  http://www.champaign.org/tmcards.html

For a another perspective, you can read Todd Sweet's blog post that details his attendance at the May Library Trustee's meeting at:  http://toddsweet.com/post/5667137544/cpl-fee-review

If you haven't visited the new Library or aren't familiar with the many offerings in the collection beyond books (DVD's, CD's, ebooks, online tutoring, resume assistance, web access to Morningstar, Standard & Poors, and other subscription-only services free to library card holders), please come check it out and enjoy a world-class benefit that your property tax dollars have provided.

Mark