RAPID CITY, SD — In a prior meeting of the Pennington County Planning Commission, the Commissioners voted unanimously to terminate current contracts with area libraries, including the Rapid City Public Library, which would see funding drop drastically from $400,000 per year down to $81,000, accounting for a drop in total library budget from 10% down to 2%.
According to Commissioner Jerry Derr (District 4), a voice pushing for a balanced budget in the county, the choice to cut the funding provided to the Libraries comes off of a wave of funding cuts to other services in an attempt to lower property taxes for the county. “The library Levee was generating, based on what the budgets were, and we were saying that we’re going to fund the library’s attending county about $550,000 a year, so that meant that we had to Levee to that $550,000 mark, and again, only to those entities outside of the municipality, and so what we looked at doing was reducing what we were collecting on the library Levy, and reducing that dollar amount substantially down, so that that dollar was not collected from the property owners”.
Though no numbers have been provided as this is still developing, non-resident county residents may see this cost shifted in other ways however, as Library Board Chair Emily Tupa said in interview last week a reduction in funding may see fees for non-Rapid City Residents increase (Such as for those in Rapid Valley and Box Elder) depending on budget demands, though no projections have been made at this time.
Numbers that we do have though differ drastically between county patrons of Rapid City’s library and residential patrons. According to Terri Davis, Director at the Rapid City Public Library “Residents who are outside the city limits constitute 20% of the use of our library. Pennington County has typically funded us between 10 and 12% of our budget, so that doesn’t cover the cost of what their county residents use the library for anyway, with the cut to $81000, they would be funding 2% of the overall budget,” continuing, stating that she finds the Commission to be disconnected with public desires based on this, “So there’s there’s been that disconnect over the years anyway in terms of what the county has been willing to fund for library services and what the county residents clearly want to use for library services. So I’m not sure if we’re when the county commission is going to realize that this is the kind of service that their residents are asking for and using”.
However “My position hasn’t changed,” Derr says. He has stated still focused on lowering property taxes for residents at the moment, continuing “There’s a lot of discussion on it during the budget process, the budget has been set, and I’m not looking to go back after, you know, one month or 2 months of setting a budget to go ahead and make changes again, and this is the problem that I have with how the county has been doing their budgeting, they will pass the budget, and then they will do budget supplements throughout the year and they’ll supplement the budget, you know, $8 million $10 million, and I believe that’s what this service to the taxpayers, but I’m looking toward a balanced budget”. “I know that it’s some difficult decisions, but I’m going to stand behind the budget that we just got together”.
Davis and Tupa have both called for a vocal public’s involvement in defending the library “I’ve already been hearing from library patrons who are saying, you know, this is ridiculous, what can we do? Who do we talk to?” and when asked who they should go to on this issue: “If they are interested in having library service here at Rapid City in the way that they have had over the past, you know, 10-12 years, then yeah, contact your County Commissioners“.
The Pennington County Board of Commissioners will meet at the Pennington County Administration Building in Rapid City on November 4th at 9am to discuss the issue.