N. Mankato, St. Peter library funding going up

By Mark Fischenich

NORTH MANKATO — Unhappy about proposed cuts in funding for library and bookmobile services, North Mankato officials were ready for a fight with Nicollet County Monday.

Instead, Nicollet County proposed a substantial increase in library funding for North Mankato and St. Peter — with the extra money coming from a plan to shutter an experimental effort to bring public library services to the town of Nicollet.

“It’s going up — not down — which is a pleasant surprise,” North Mankato City Administrator Wendell Sande told the City Council after a meeting of the city-county liaison committee.

That’s a rare thing in the current economy when it comes to revenue for local governments, particularly after a series of cuts in state aid to cities and counties. And it was more surprising because the Nicollet County Library Board in September had approved a draft budget for 2010 that cut North Mankato’s library aid by more than $3,300 from the $50,000 the county is providing this year.

At a library board meeting Thursday, the board decided to eliminate the $20,000 Nicollet School Library Project. North Mankato, which provides bookmobile service countywide, and St. Peter will be splitting most of the money currently being used to provide the general public with access to books and computers at the Nicollet Public School library.

Under the revised budget, North Mankato will receive more than $57,000, including $12,000 for operating the bookmobile service. St. Peter’s $40,000 in county library aid will rise by $5,000.

In return, North Mankato officials on the city-county committee tentatively agreed to have the bookmobile make two additional stops each month in Nicollet — both in the evening — so residents would still have access to public library services after normal work hours.

North Mankato, which took over bookmobile operations more than a year ago, has added stops to the route and recently began offering evening hours in some small towns.

Mayor Gary Zellmer told county officials those sorts of improvements will continue.

“As long as you’re willing to back us, whatever we can do we’ll do,” Zellmer said.

The boost in county aid comes at a good time for North Mankato, which is expanding its Taylor Library by 60 percent and plans to add a staff person to help supervise the additional space.

Officials in Nicollet, a growing town of about 1,000 people, would have preferred to see the school library project continued, County Administrator Bob Podhradsky said. But the project, which began in May of 2008 and offered public access to books and computers during some school hours and on two evenings a week, never generated much public interest.

“That was a good experiment,” Podhradsky said. “What the library board said was they tried it for 18 months and the usage just wasn’t there.”