If you weren’t aware, it’s National Library Week! I wanted to take some time to answer a frequent question that often doesn’t have a lot of time to be fully explained. There is a lot of misinformation, and blatant falsehoods out there about this query, so I hope this helps some folks.
Who pays for operating the library?
Particularly as we are looking towards a building project, the number of times this concept has been brought up is innumerable. There is a lot of nuance to the answer, but the simplest is: everyone helps pay for running the library.
Let’s start with the Village of Cadott. If you live within the village, a certain portion of your property tax dollars go towards the library’s annual budget. The Village, over the last several years, has given $50,000 to the library’s operating budget. Your share of the $50,000 depends on your assessed property value. Without getting too far into the weeds with the various calculations and credits, the represents a small portion of your property tax bill. I don’t (as of this writing) have an exact figure for that amount but we are looking into it. Chances are, it’s not as much as you think.
The $50,000 is not enough to run the library, in fact it doesn’t even cover our staff wages.
So where does the rest come from? Mostly, it comes from Chippewa County.
Each year the library sends a funding request to Chippewa County based on the prior year’s use by individuals living outside one of the municipalities with a library and our operating expenditures. For example, this year we will be sending the request based on 2023 data and the library will receive the payment from the county in 2025. In 2024 we received 90% of the cost for serving those residents. The Chippewa County Board of Supervisors recently passed their new County Library Plan which will increase that percentage 2% each year over the next five years resulting in the library receiving 100% of the cost in 2029.
In 2022, our circulation was 17,775 items. 9,012 of those were to Chippewa County residents, outside of the municipality. Cost Per Circulation? $5.70, per item. Our reimbursement? $46,190.26. We also receive, smaller, amounts from other counties, such as Eau Claire, Clark, and Rusk.
So, that answers where the bulk of our operational funding comes from.
“But Samma,” you may be thinking, “you said that everyone pays for the library. I don’t own property or pay any kind of local tax. How am I paying for the library?” If you rent, your landlord is paying the property taxes from your rent, so there is that.
In addition, other library services such as BadgerLink are supported with state funding. The cost to access to Wisconsin Digital Public Library (Libby) is shared across the entire state by local libraries and regional funding. The library also receives support from the IFLS Library System which receives their funding from State Aid payments. As you can see a great variety of funding sources help support library services in Cadott and Wisconsin as a whole. We all work together to keep our libraries working for our communities, which extend the boundaries of any single municipality.