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DIRECTOR'S REPORT
August 2009

Director’s Report and Highlights August 18, 2009
Pamela Nyberg Kiesner, Director
Bellingham, Washington

The focus of our meeting this month is on the 2010 budget. Here is what we will cover:

Executive session
Lorna Klemanski, Human Resources Analyst, and I will update you on the status of concessions bargaining with our labor unions.

Budget presentation
I’ll share a brief presentation with you highlighting the directives I’ve received from the City, my budget goals, and revenue trends. Please review our rates and fees (included in your packet), in preparation for a discussion about whether to increase any of them. Last year the Board discussed increasing our meeting room rates on an annual basis. Still interested?

I’ll pass out our line item detail at the meeting, and will provide further information for you about the budget. Our budget is due to the City on August 21, just a few days after our Board meeting, so we’ll discuss our direction as the numbers are finalized.

A difficult week
In February of this year, we had a budget cut of $122,000. As a library board, you decided at that time to reduce the library materials budget, a cut that represented a 20% cut to the books and library materials budget. This has been a severe reduction, and at this point in the year, for instance, the selectors are nearly out of funds in our fiction account.

As you are aware, we have a directive from the Mayor to reduce the library’s 2010 budget by $350,000, effective on October 1, 2009. This second hit affects our personnel budget. On Monday, August 17, I will deliver news to several of our staff members that their last day will be September 30, or that their positions are at risk because they could be bumped out of it by a more senior staff member. I can share more details with you at the Board meeting, but I wanted you to know what a difficult week this will be for the staff as they experience either the loss of their jobs, being at risk of losing their jobs, or experiencing grief at the loss of their co-workers.

I wish that I could be more positive about the outlook, but all indicators from the City is that this is not the end of our budget cuts for 2010 – and maybe yet for 2009. Our budget is primarily wages and benefits and library materials; both have taken big hits. We will talk through what our next steps will be during this difficult time.