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Lexington City Council last Thursday unanimously approved a request to fully fund the Rockbridge Regional Library in fiscal year 2025.
The library made a funding request of $216,636 from the city for the 2025 fiscal year, and the city had approved $196,890, leaving a difference of $19,746. Rockbridge County also did not fully fund the library’s request for the current fiscal year by a difference of $33,397, giving the library a budget that was $53,683 less than they had requested.
Julie Goyette, executive director for the Rockbridge Regional Library, made a request for full funding to the Rockbridge County Board of Supervisors at its Aug. 26 meeting, though the Board took no action or had any discussion at that time. They will revisit the issue at an upcoming meeting.
The other localities that provide funding to the library, Bath County and Buena Vista, fully funded the library’s requests for the current fiscal year.
Lexington City Manager Tom Carroll explained to Council that there were two key factors that resulted in the FY25 requests from the library having a large increase over its requests for FY24.
First, when calculating the funding requests in FY24, a budgeting error resulted in the library requesting $70,000 less than what it needed. The library did not request the additional funding at that time and made do with its reserve funds.
The other factor was the fact that a number of library employees opted to either change their health insurance coverage or add dependants, which resulted in an increase of $22,000 to the coverage costs.
“We have asked for additional information from Ms. Goyette, and she’s opened her books, and I am comfortable that the wage increases have been appropriate and comparable to city and county employees, and that they are well-managed and well-run,” Carroll said before recommending that Council approve the library’s funding request.
The additional funding, Carroll told Council, would likely come from the city’s unassigned fund balance and would be formally allocated by a budget amendment at a future meeting.
In response to a question from Council member Nicholas Betts, Goyette explained that, if the city approves the funding request and the county doesn’t that the library would still have to cut hours and services, but not as much as without the funding from both localities.
“When we look at reducing services and hours, we don’t look to hurt anybody,” she said. “We look at when people are in the library the most and that’s not when we’re going to cut services and hours. But ultimately, we will have to reduce services and hours. … $20,000 is very helpful to us, but it’s not going to fill gap like the $53,000 would.”
Council member David Sigler asked if all of the branches of the library would be affected by a reduction in services and hours, and Goyette explained that when there are funding shortages, the reductions are made in the localities where the shortages occur, citing a recent example of hours at the Buena Vista library being reduced after the city did not fully fund the library’s request in a previous fiscal year.
“I have no problem supporting this,” Sigler said prior to the vote. “Obviously the library is an incredibly valuable tool to Lexington. I don’t want Lexington residents to think that we’re not supporting it. I thought our allocation was on par with some of the other localities and that it was not greatly less, but that’s neither here nor there. I just want it to be known that Lexington supports our libraries.”
Betts made the motion to approve the funding request and Vice Mayor Marilyn Alexander provided the second.
