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Date: 2/16/2022
EASTHAMPTON – With budget season approaching, Emily Williston Memorial Library is working with the mayor’s office and city departments to find ways in which more baseline funding could be provided for services at the library.
In their February newsletter sent out to the public, the library asked the public for their help in getting more money allocated to library services by contacting the mayor’s office as a sign of support for the endeavor.
“We want to offer more service to Easthampton through programs, expanded partnerships, updated equipment, more staffing (which means more open hours!), and more research databases, but we can’t do these things without additional funding,” read the newsletter.
In an interview with Reminder Publishing, library Director Katya Schapiro said Mayor Nicole LaChapelle has also encouraged people to express support for more funding.
“We have encouraged the city and are trying to work with them on various ways that the city can take over a larger share of our baseline funding in order to make sure that we are a robust organization,” said Schapiro.
According to Schapiro, the library is a private nonprofit that works with the city for services, a model that is similar to other arrangements in the area. Under this current model, the city provides them with a certain percentage of the library’s funding. Recently, the city provided the library with the base amount of funding recommended by the state in order for Williston to receive state aid funding, which purchases a lot of the library’s materials.
According to the fiscal year 2022 (FY22) budget, an appropriation of $218,927.36 was approved for the library, which was an increase of slightly less than $5,500 over the FY21 budget of $213,466. This appropriation, according to the budget narrative, supports 57 percent of the library’s total operating budget in FY22, with the remainder supplemented by fundraising efforts.
“Maintaining an expectation that the Library’s Board of Directors fund-raise $200,000 or more annually is not a sustainable or realistic expectation,” the FY22 budget narrative reads. “The library’s endowment cannot support funding our budget to this degree on an annual basis.”
Schapiro said the mayor and the City Council are in full support of finding ways to increase the baseline budget for the library. “It’s just something we’re working on logistically,” said Schapiro, adding that the city was able to provide them with a one-time allocation of cannabis funds this year to help with education and programming at the library.
“We’re coming out of a pandemic, and we’re trying very hard to continue the expanded virtual services that we’ve offered, and also start thinking about what it means to start bringing people back into the building,” said Schapiro. “We’re in a very exciting moment, where we are trying different ways to connect with the community.”
In a phone interview with Reminder Publishing, LaChapelle said that Schapiro, the library’s Board of Directors, and the staff do a great job of balancing needs with the amount of money they receive.
“Each line needs and deserves more money,” said LaChapelle, regarding the library budget. The mayor confirmed that, over the last 18 months, she has been able to free up money from ARPA funds and cannabis stabilization and shift it towards the library.
LaChapelle added that the city has been sticking to the MAR formula, or Municipal Appropriation Requirement, to make sure certain aspects of the library have been funded so they do not lose out on state grants. To bolster that formula, LaChapelle said the city donated $15,000 for the library’s community education during the pandemic, $30,000 to continue that educative work, and $10,000 at the beginning of the pandemic. Additionally, Schapiro is also working with the board to find a way to obtain donations or foundation grants to help augment the shortfalls.
“There’s a transition going on in the board side, and on the city side, it’s getting what they need as far as the MAR formula and finding different buckets to augment that,” said LaChapelle.
In surveying the community in the past, Schapiro said they found that people would love to see more weekend hours at the library. In order to add these hours, the library would need to seek more staffing, which a higher baseline budget could help with. “Bringing good, talented people who are able to work on staff – especially on weekends – is really important, and is certainly something we want to expand,” said Schapiro, who added that the current hours have fluctuated a bit since reopening the building in August.
“The more we can be open, the more we can serve people who have different schedules, different jobs and different needs.” To accommodate the lack of expansive hours on the weekend, the library participates in a variety of community outreach and visits the farmers’ market regularly, according to Schapiro.
“We’re happy with our current little service, but there are obvious ways we can expand it and grow it as well,” Schapiro added. “Our goal is to work with the city and city officials as much as possible and create as many collaborations as we can.”
The library is open Monday through Wednesday, 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. People can email LaChapelle to offer support on the topic at mayor@easthamptonma.gov.