Library's Funding Comes from Multiple Sources

The Ithaca Journal
October 30, 2006
by Robert Sullivan, Tompkins County Public Library trustee and Chair of the Library's Public Information Committee


Members of the Tompkins County Public Library’s Board of Trustees are often approached by people who have questions to ask, or comments to make, about the Library. We don’t think of that as a problem. On the contrary, it’s one of the real pleasures of serving on the Board. Anyone who knows anything about the people of Tompkins County knows that they are engaged and passionate about the things that matter to them. Any member of the Board can tell you that the Library matters, deeply, to many people in Tompkins County. This becomes particularly clear about this time every year when the Library’s budget is being considered by the County Legislature. That’s because every Fall our hopes for the Library – when it can be open and what it will contain – are examined in the light of the realities of paying for them. I know that when I came onto the Board I needed to have a few issues straightened out for me before I could really understand how funding the Library works. I hope the following clarifies some questions you might have about our budget.

Who is responsible for the Library? Many of us think of the TCPL as being either “The Ithaca Library” or just “The Library.” In fact, though, the Library is chartered to serve all of Tompkins County. Our patrons come from all over the County, in numbers roughly representative of the make-up of the County, urban, rural, and suburban. Although some towns, such as Ulysses and Groton, also have separately chartered municipal libraries, many of the people in those towns use the County Library, and the County Library, in turn, provides their municipal libraries with important services. So, the Library is a County responsibility and the County Legislature funds roughly 75% of the Library’s operations from tax revenues. What about support from other governmental entities? Sales tax from the City of Ithaca represents .4% of our revenue. Federal support through the Institute of Museum and Libraries is directed for specific grant proposals and State support which represents 4.3 % of our budget has been flat at for nine years.

What about private giving? The Library is greatly fortunate to have the support of two marvelous, hard-working, and very generous groups, the Library Foundation and the Friends of the Library. The Tompkins County Public Library Foundation is a nonprofit organization with a mission support the Tompkins County Public Library. The Foundation is a separate entity from the Friends of the Library and the Tompkins County Public Library with its own board of directors, mission and by-laws. The Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library is a not-for-profit organization the purpose of which is to stimulate public interest in the library, purchase library materials, and support other cultural and educational programs in Tompkins County. Many people know the Friends because of their fabulous book sales. Together these two philanthropies provide the Library with a full [cash amount and %] of its budget, far in excess of the national average for philanthropic support for public libraries. The Friends and the Foundation are supposed to be providing the Library with support ‘above and beyond’ its core functions, payroll, upkeep, and regular purchases for the collection. Unfortunately, for the last few years we’ve had to use some of this philanthropic giving to fund these core Library functions. The Library literally couldn’t keep its doors open without the generous support of the Friends and the Foundation. Why?

A little history. When the Library moved from its old building on Cayuga Street the County Legislature was put in a quandary. Everyone agreed that the new building was a huge and necessary improvement over the old facility. However, it would have been fiscally impossible for the County to immediately take on the full funding of the Library, Simply put, the new facility was so much larger that filling it up with books and staffing it appropriately could not be done all at once. So, for the past [5 right?] years, funds from private giving have had to make up the gap between what the Library requires in order to perform its basic functions and what the County Legislature can realistically ask from taxpayers. This has lead, for instance, to the anomalous and ultimately untenable situation where the Friends [and Foundation] have for several years provided the Library with its entire materials budget.

What next? Fortunately, due to an ongoing collaborative effort between the Library and the County Legislature this gap is being narrowed every year. Though not at zero quite yet, it’s the hope of all that as soon as possible the County will be funding core Library functions, such as payroll and materials, and the private donations of our generous donors to the Friends and Foundation will be supporting those enhancements to Library services that we all so much want to see. When that day comes the Library and the County Legislature will still need to make difficult and important decisions about the budget. Hopefully, though, the answers we give to questions from patrons and taxpayers will be simpler than they are today.