Defend – Don’t Defund – Our Public Libraries

It’s been heartening to learn that so many Library supporters are speaking out in opposition to the Potter County Commissioners’ 2025 budget proposal, which reduces funding to the county’s five public libraries. The public’s robust and well-informed response to this crisis is a testament to the high value local residents place on library services.

However, we have learned of significant errors in the Commissioners’’ formal response to those who reach out, as well as in conversations between members of the Board of Commissioners and the public. We would like to take this opportunity to make library supporters aware of those grave errors.

For background, the Commissioners’ proposed budget, which will be voted on December 26 at 11:00 a.m. at the Gunzburger Building, cuts the county’s library subsidy from $60,000 to $50,000, and reduces the annual special programming grant to each library from $2,500 to $1,500. These cuts will have immediate impacts on all five Potter County public libraries, necessitating reduced operating hours and services, which will affect patrons of all ages, and scaled-down summer learning programming, which will hit libraries’ youngest patrons hard.

In their responses to Library supporters who oppose the proposed reductions, the Commissioners maintain “Primary responsibility for library funding rests with the Commonwealth.”  This statement is erroneous. The State Library Code reads as follows:

Section 144.2. Purpose of State aid.

The purpose of financial assistance for local libraries by the Commonwealth is to encourage and enable local investment in the improvement of public library service and fulfill those educational, informational, and recreational needs of its residents served by public library agencies. Decisions relating to the granting of aid to a given library will be influenced by this objective.

In other words, contrary to the Commissioners’ position, the state subsidy is meant not as a primary means of support, but as a supplement to local funding. (Local funding includes county and municipal government subsidies as well as money raised through donations and fundraising.)

The phrase “Decisions … will be influenced by this objective” means that the county’s contribution is leveraged with the state. When a library receives money from the county, it receives additional dollars from the state. So, every dollar received from the county ends up being worth more than just one dollar.

However, a reduction in county funding therefore leads to a reduction in state funding. So under the proposal, the libraries would not only lose county funds, they would lose a certain amount of state funds in proportion. A local dollar cut means more than a dollar lost.

Also, the Commissioners maintain that grant funds are available to help libraries operate. In general, this is not true. There are matching grants for new construction; there are occasional technology grants which are generally tied to a specific item or items; there are grants for children’s books which are geared to a specific list of available books. Potter County libraries have taken advantage of these grants, but are still held to the state standard of spending 12% of their overall budget on books and other items for the collection. Getting books through a grant does not reduce that requirement.

There are no grants for operations – for keeping the Library doors open.

These proposed cuts will have an immediate impact on all libraries, from reductions in operating hours to scaling back of summer learning programs. For Potter County’s smaller libraries, the cuts will be even more devastating; they may even result in permanent closures.

With the Commissioners focusing on revitalization of arts and culture in the county, and encouraging young people to remain in the county instead of leaving the area, now is a very bad time to be cutting funding for library services.

Libraries are one of the few institutions that serve the entire public for free, at any age, from babies through our oldest citizens. Not many institutions can say that. Our public support is generous; a significant portion of our budget comes from donations and fundraising. But we fear that this year’s proposed county cut will be just the beginning, and that the county will continue cutting until the entire library subsidy is gone.

We urge the Commissioners to continue conversations with us to broaden their understanding of how libraries are funded, and to respond to the public’s pleas by finding a way to keep the Library funding intact – which they can then celebrate as a great success story. And also, to bear in mind this quote from the late newsman Walter Cronkite, “Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”

Coudersport Public Library Board of Trustees

Jane Metzger, President