Reading the Room — Library County Board Members Make the Town Council Rounds
SARATOGA — The seven libraries in Carbon County are facing the harsh reality of budget cuts.
The January 2025 Carbon County Council of Governments meeting proposed reducing the Carbon County Library System Operational budgets as part of overall reductions across boards to include museums, senior centers and the economic development corporation.
“The Carbon County Commissioners were rather prescient in preemptively looking for ways to offset budget cuts,” said CCLS Board Member Adelaide Myers. “We (the CCLS Board) are taking suggestions to keep the libraries operating at their current level.”
Myers and other board members have attended town council meetings all over Carbon County to ask for ideas to keep all doors open and functioning for the communities.
“These libraries safekeep and provide free information for our society,” she said, explaining that the public might not know of the many services that the libraries provide:
- Free WiFi
- Books and audiobooks
- Free test proctoring
- Material lamination
- Faxing
- Public computers
- Meeting and study rooms
- Makerspace (where people can meet to share their interests, learn new technology and work on various projects)
- Free notary services
- ebooks and digital content
- Printing and Scanning services
The CCLS Board has not received any suggestions so far in helping with operational costs from Carbon County towns.
Some help to the libraries might come in the form of town budget line items for electrical services, phone and internet services, snow removal and water supply unique to each municipality.
As new budgets are constructed for the upcoming year, the CCLS Board hopes the towns might consider adding support to their libraries.
The fiscal year budgets for the CCLS from 2021 to present have consisted of between 53-55% expenditures covered by Carbon County and 45-47% funding received from outside sources.
The outside sources to the library include a library foundation which houses individual donations and endowments, Friends of the Library and many outside grants ranging from school district recreation boards to WY Humanities grants.
“Combining outside agencies does not produce a dramatic lowering of costs,” said CCLS Executive Director Maria Wenzel. “Some of our libraries are one-person shows and many hats are worn by our enthusiastic, hard working individuals. Everyone is spread thin as it is.”
Wenzel maintains the library board is hoping for “solutions that will help all of our current communities retain these precious resources.”
The CCLS Board will continue to visit town council meetings to develop some type of support for the next fiscal year to bridge the shortfall from anticipated Carbon County budget cuts.
This story was published on May 2, 2025.