Budget wrangling at the state Legislature’s spring session led to a 9 percent cut in funding for the state’s public libraries, but the impact of the move on Greenwood-Leflore Public Library is uncertain.
Walk into the Greenwood library system’s downtown branch on a typical afternoon, and you’ll find a cool escape from steamy sidewalks outside. Patrons arrive on bikes, in strollers and on foot.
A pile of free giveaway books, discarded from the library stacks, lines a front table. In the periodicals corner, a man reads the daily newspaper. Beyond the entry area, men and women click away at computers connected to the Internet.
All of those services are at risk at Mississippi libraries, said Susan Cassagne, executive director of the Mississippi Library Commission, in an op-ed piece published in The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson this week. She mentioned that small towns depend on libraries for help with tax filing, submitting job applications and schoolwork, among other tasks.
In towns where Mississippi Library Commission funding is not adequately offset by local funding, libraries may have to adjust their operating hours, staffing and funding for new purchases.
But in Greenwood, the city and county have stepped up to fund the library and its two branches to the tune of around $387,000 a year or about 87 percent of total operating funds.
The remainder comes from the Mississippi Library Commission, said Naomi Jones, business manager for the Greenwood-Leflore Public Library System.
“In our current budget, the city gave us $192,737 plus $22,000 to pay our utilities,” Jones said. “We received $171,935 from the county.”
The district received a $34,176 health insurance grant from the state, funds that are not at risk under the new cuts.
But funding from the Personnel Incentive Grant Program, issued by the Mississippi Library Commission, has been cut.
“Last year at the beginning of the fiscal year, we were supposed to receive $57,000, and that was cut in January to $56,000. Now that amount has been cut to $48,347, or by about $9,000,” said Jones.
The library board has not yet met to discuss where those cuts will be applied.
But on Wednesday, Jones said, library staff had to tell students from Greenwood High School applying for summer jobs under a cooperative work training program run by the school, that they were not accepting applications.
The library usually has two student workers, Jones said, but can’t commit to paying any new employees at this time.
Mayor Carolyn McAdams sees funding the library as a no-brainer and a key portion of the city’s budget.
“We support the library because you still have access to books and learning materials (and) also to computers,” McAdams said. “And even though we live in a computer-literate world, not everyone has one in their home.”
McAdams points to those Greenwood citizens who use the library computers to fill out online job applications, a requirement of most companies in 2016.
“That opportunity for our citizens to go to our local library and get help on anything — an essay, homework, a job application — that’s invaluable.”
McAdams also points to the importance of the library as a quiet haven in a noisy world and to the upstairs Teen Center at the downtown branch as “a very structured, good, safe hangout space where kids can play computer games and, at the same time, learn computer skills.”
“In my opinion, the public library is a huge public asset for the city,” she said. “What we don’t want is to have that go away.
“Mississippi is very low on the totem pole of public education, so not funding the public library is just a terrible idea.”
• Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
