Cascade County Commissioners have not cut funding for county libraries for the fiscal year that begins July 1, nor have they made a plan to phase out funding by the following fiscal year.

Commissioners and the county finance officer met with the three local librarians and some members of their boards during a May 27 meeting.

The Electric attended the meeting and was the only other member of the public or media in the room.

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The commission has similar discussion meetings on various topics that aren’t recorded, but are noticed on the county calendar and open to the public.

The Cascade Courier recently reported that the county announced it was eliminating library funding, based heavily on a social media post by Rae Grulkowski, a former county commissioner.

Grulkowski did not attend the meeting, nor was such an announcement made.

Commissioners met with local museums about their county funding just before the library meeting. The Electric also attended that meeting and will detail that discussion in a separate story.

In a follow-up email, Briggs said the intent of the meeting with the libraries and museums “was to make them aware of the fiscal realities that are coming for county governments over the next few years and give them the opportunity to prepare. Final decisions will not be made until the budget is set in August, following the formal budget hearings and a public budget meeting, but at this point, I do not believe that any changes to library and museums will be made until fiscal year 2028,” which begins July 1, 2027.

The following is a report of the discussion that occurred during the meeting.

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Trista Besich, county finance officer, said the commission has been discussing budgets and looking at services the county is not statutorily required to provide.

The county does not have a library district, which may be created under state law, with its own levy to fund library operations.

The county does have interlocal agreements with the towns of Belt and Cascade and the Great Falls Public Library.

According to budget documents provided during the May 27 meeting, the county has funded those three libraries, ranging from $281,954 in fiscal year 2023 to $285,101.50 in fiscal year 2025 and $290,963 in the current budget year, which ends June 30.

City of Great Falls voters approved a change to the city charter in 2023, providing additional funding for GFPL. That funding is strictly through the city and does not apply to county libraries.

Carey Ann Haight, deputy county attorney, said the agreement with the Town of Cascade had expired. She said county staff had been trying to get it renewed since both the county and the town wanted to make changes.

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Nancy Royan, Wedsworth Memorial librarian in Cascade, said their agreement automatically renewed and she hadn’t heard of any changes.

Haight said the county wanted to make operational changes to make the Wedsworth/Cascade agreement more like the Belt agreement, rather than having an employee the county can’t supervise, as is currently the case for Wedsworth.

Royan said the Wedsworth Trust essentially started the library under the family’s will, so the trust has a lot of oversight and doesn’t want the library to fall under the town and the town can’t afford to operate the library.

Commissioner Eric Hinebauch said the county doesn’t want to manage the employee and wants to shift that responsibility to the town, as it did in Belt, where the county provides a lump sum and the town manages the library employees.

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Commissioner Joe Briggs said in the case of the Great Falls Public Library, the long-standing issue is how to ascertain the number of county residents who use GFPL since they’re also providing library services in the county.

Briggs said to Amy Dissmeyer, the new GFPL director, that her predecessors hadn’t been able to provide that information.

Dissmeyer asked if he was looking for the number of cardholders or the number of items checked out.

Hinebauch said both.

Briggs said they’ve always asked for cardholders, but perhaps there was a better way to measure the usage split between city and county residents.

He said that for the county to make an appropriate allocation to GFPL, commissioners need to understand how many rural folks are using the facility.

“That is a number that has been elusive,” Briggs said.

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Gladys Rayhill, Belt librarian, said that just because someone has a library card, they may not walk into the library, but could be using library services such as audiobooks and ebooks.

Dissmeyer said she ran the numbers the morning of the May 27 meeting and they had 17,000 cardholders, of which 2,500 were residents outside the city limits.

She said it doesn’t capture people who might come into town to use their Wi-Fi or participate in library programs,

Dissmeyer said they could track checkouts from the building versus the Bookmobile, but the Belt and Cascade libraries also check out items from the Bookmobile.

Besich said they know there are intangible benefits of the libraries, but they have to find some way to account for usage in their allocations.

Belt has 575 active cardholders, Rayhill said, but she issues family cards, so that number may not account for everyone using the library.

Royan said cardholders might only be checking out digital materials.

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Rayhill said the Belt library doesn’t have funds for an audiobook subscription, so they use that service through GFPL.

On the budget, Royan said hers is $22,000, of which $19,000 comes from the county.

Under the 2014 interlocal agreement between the county and Town of Cascade, the county provides $13,000 for collections plus the librarian’s salary, benefits and insurance.

The budget worksheet provided during the May 27 meeting shows that the county funds $39,600 for a full-time librarian and “librarian sub.”

The Electric has requested clarification from county officials regarding the “librarian sub” and the change from $13,000 to $19,000.

Haight told The Electric that in 2022, the county discussed with the town’s attorney at the time the county’s interest in having the town employ the librarian, as is the case with Belt.

Royan told commissioners that there’s a pending lead mitigation project at Wedsworth that could cost $30,000, and she recently updated the library’s website for ADA compliance, which was $4,000.

She said she wrote 21 grants and received $9,000 for lead mitigation, but “the town has become difficult.”

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Commissioner Jim Larson said they’d been told the town had completed the lead mitigation.

Royan said it was not done and the lead contamination came from the basement with the furnace. She said the town wouldn’t allow the library to clean the basement to install a new furnace.

The Electric emailed the town regarding Royan’s comments during the May 27 meeting and has not yet received a response.

Dissmeyer said the GFPL budget was $2.7 million, which the library board approved May 26. That budget will be reviewed by the City Commission and included with the full city budget adoption later this summer.

Belt’s budget includes $51,000 from the county, $2,700 from the state and about $2,000 in donations, Rayhill said.

Her salary and benefits equate to about $46,000.

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The Town of Belt does not contribute to the library operations but owns the building and pays for water, Rayhill said. The town previously provided $2,000 annually, but that was cut to $1,000 for a few years when the town built a new water tower and road. She said the town hasn’t contributed to the library since about 2010.

Besich said the county commission had discussed services it’s not mandated to provide under state law and there’s been an effort in recent years to align what rural residents were being taxed in support of rural services.

The GFPL and City-County Health Department had been funded with rural mills.

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She asked if the commission wanted to proceed with funding GFPL for the upcoming budget year without an interlocal agreement in place.

Briggs said yes for the upcoming budget, but wants to get an interlocal agreement in place.

“The way we’ve always done it doesn’t really suffice,” he said.

The county has provided $177,000 annually to GFPL since 2011, but it’s unclear how that figure was established.

Haight, deputy county attorney, told The Electric that the only signed agreement she has between the county and GFPL is from 1979, in which the annual payment was $85,058.

In 2021, there was a draft interlocal agreement for the county and GFPL that was not formally considered by the county. The GFPL board pursued the city charter amendment to increase mills dedicated to library mills from two, up to 17, which voters approved in 2023.

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As the GFPL board and staff pursued the levy vote, former library director Susie McIntyre looked into a county-wide levy for library funding, but that required approval from the Belt and Cascade libraries.

In 2022, McIntyre said both of those libraries indicated they weren’t interested in creating a county library district, which would have its own board to govern all the libraries in the county. In that scenario, the GFPL would no longer be a city department.

Briggs said that GFPL funding had been discussed over the years, but no consensus was reached.

At one point, he said they considered having GFPL determine how much county residents cost per library card and the county would pay that amount.

Briggs said he recognizes that county residents who live outside the city limits use GFPL and the county needs to pay for that, but it needs to be fair.

They also need to account for the Bookmobile since it serves rural areas and Briggs said perhaps they should consider a general allocation to GFPL and one specific to the Bookmobile.

Rayhill asked if the Belt agreement could also be reviewed since it was signed in 2020 with no consideration of increasing costs.

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Briggs said commissioners recognize the increasing costs for libraries, but they’re in the same situation with services they’re required to provide.

“Are you trying to get rid of the county libraries,” Rayhill asked.

Briggs said no, but they have to figure out how to support libraries with limited resources.

Besich said the county had cut 24.5 positions this budget year, on top of 19 last year. The majority of those positions were in CCHD and vacancies that were not filled.

Briggs said the Montana Legislature repealed a five-mill levy for libraries in the early 1990s so now the county funds libraries out of other areas.

“We’re running out of the funds that are flexible to do that,” he said.

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“I really view the bookmobile as the premier service we’re getting out of the library,” Briggs said. “I’m not sure what the library of next year looks like.”

The Bookmobile facilitates interlibrary loans with the Belt and Cascade libraries and Rayhill said that offers more materials to residents than the Belt library could afford on its own.

He said he still thinks of libraries as a place to walk in, check out a book and leave, but that they’re in an evolutionary period.

Royan said many come in to use the computers and programs, such as reading and writing services.

Rayhill said they offer homeschool library days.

The librarians said they serve daycares and the Hutterite colonies.

Those entities might have classroom or institution cards, they said.

Dissmeyer said GFPL staff was working to streamline the types of library cards they offer to simply management but that many kids have their own cards and are excited to use it at the Bookmobile.

The librarians said they’d run numbers on usage and their reports to the state.

Besich said they’d schedule another meeting for August to continue the discussion.