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Library reimbursement rate to be increased
(by Karen F. Mrnarevic - July 16, 2008)
|
What municipal libraries cost PV towns
| Municipality |
Appropriated 2008 |
Appropriated 2007 |
| Emerson |
$448,671 |
$433,197 |
| Hillsdale |
$660,341 |
$644,314 |
| Montvale |
$711,664 |
$684,617 |
| Park Ridge |
$669,009 |
$665,009 |
| River Vale |
$747,000 |
$713,930 |
| Twp. of
Washington |
$664,115 |
$647,779 |
| Westwood |
$691,220 |
$665,910 |
| Woodcliff
Lake |
$66,250 |
$76,250 |
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At its July 7 meeting, the Borough Council of Woodcliff Lake made a motion to raise the library reimbursement rate for its residents. Currently, residents of the borough who have family memberships at libraries in nearby towns can receive a $200 reimbursement of the membership fee. But with many libraries raising their membership rates, the borough decided that the reimbursement rate should be raised to $275. The council is expected to pass a formal resolution authorizing the increase, which will be retroactive to April 1, at its next meeting, on Aug. 4.
Unlike the other towns in the
Pascack
Valley ,
Woodcliff
Lake does not have its own library. However, residents have the option to join other area libraries and receive, at a minimum, borrowing privileges. According to Councilman Paul Camella, who is the liaison to the Library Committee, there are currently only around 140
Woodcliff
Lake families who are members of area libraries. This figure is based on the number of families who appeal to the borough for reimbursement. The borough does not have any data available for residents who may be members of area libraries but have not applied for reimbursement, but Camella estimates that there are only a few.
About half of
Woodcliff
Lake families that have applied for reimbursement are members of the public library in
Pearl River, N.Y. Non-resident membership at that library used to cost $187 for a family, but in April of this year, the rate was raised to $300. This, said Camella, was the main contributing factor in the council’s decision to raise the reimbursement rate.
Currently, Camella said, the cost for a
Woodcliff
Lake resident to join a library within the Bergen County Cooperative Library System (BCCLS) is around $450 per year. This rate includes both borrowing privileges and attendance to library-sponsored programs. However, BCCLS does not allow non-residents to participate in the open borrowing system; they are limited to the material available at the library for which they have purchased a membership. The Ridgewood Public Library, said Camella, charges $350 for a non-resident family membership, but the rate only includes borrowing privileges, not participation in programs;
Upper
Saddle
River provides a similar conditional membership for the same price.
Woodcliff
Lake appropriates a sum of money in each year’s budget to cover library reimbursement. For 2007, it appropriated $76,250, but Camella said that the actual amount spent in reimbursements was closer to $25,000. The borough appropriated $10,000 less in the 2008 budget for reimbursements, but even with the retroactively increased rate, the borough is unlikely to use the entire amount. The remainder, said Camella, gets rolled over into the budget surplus.
That is only a very small portion of what the borough would be required to spend annually if it decided to join the BCCLS system. Camella said that based on a state funding formula governing municipal library funding, Woodcliff Lake would have to spend about $750,000 per year for its residents to all have full membership to the BCCLS system. If
Woodcliff
Lake chose to build its own library, capital costs would add hundreds of thousands of dollars to that figure annually.
In the past, some
Woodcliff
Lake residents have tried to get the borough to join BCCLS, but were unable to garner enough popular support for the cause. In 2004, the borough introduced a referendum during election season allowing residents to vote on whether the borough should join BCCLS. The referendum called for an initial tax increase of $134,000, increasing to $384,000 over five years. The average homeowner in the borough would have ended up paying an extra $150 per year toward library services. The referendum was defeated 1,781 to 890, indicating that the majority of voting residents were not in favor of the increase, even if it would mean increased library services for everyone in the borough. Local politicians were critical of BCCLS at the time, saying that a community that does not have a library should not have to pay the same amount to belong to BCCLS as a community that has to maintain a library.
But while some may believe that the cost of municipal libraries is unreasonably high, BCCLS Executive Director Robert White urges people to consider the value of a free library to the residents of a town, especially libraries with a cohesive cooperative borrowing system like that of BCCLS. A library membership, he said in a phone interview, “is a low cost luxury. It’s not the glitziest thing in the world, but its cheap, reliable and it works.” He also points out that if every town without a library could just join BCCLS at a reduced cost, many municipalities might choose to just close their libraries down. “There are a variety of reasons that politicians would love to close these libraries,” said White, not the least of which, he says is the politicians’ desire to prevent this large budget line item from affecting public opinion of them.
Karen F. Mrnarevic's e-mail address is Mrnarevic@northjersey.com.
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