In the land of budget crises, the department with a positive ending fund balance is king - or at least won't have to cut services, lay off employees or slash operating hours.
Long live the Pima County Public Library, then, because it is headed down the homestretch of fiscal year 2010 almost $2 million in the black.
It hasn't happened without some sacrifice. The library has been operating with a number of personnel vacancies throughout the year and has scaled back maintenance costs and the use of substitute employees.
But for now, the surplus will keep the library system nicely insulated from the cuts and scale-backs other county departments may be facing, that is, unless voters reject the 1-cent-per-dollar sales tax that will be on the Arizona May ballot.
Deputy County Administrator Henry Atha says the library budget surplus has been cultivated through "good budgeting and good management."
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Atha said the Board of Supervisors "anticipated difficulties" in cash-flow and "deliberately built up a fund to maintain [library] services at approximately the same level" regardless of potential shock waves from the statewide budget crisis.
The Free Library District Fund should be enough to see the library system through fiscal year 2011 without needing to cut services, personnel or library hours. But Atha warns that without approval of the May sales-tax hike "all bets are off."
County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said that's because the county will have to raise its primary property tax rate to compensate for any state cuts. To keep homeowner bills from going up too much, the county is likely to offset the primary increase by cutting the library district tax rate, he said.
Pima County libraries had a budget of approximately $35 million for 2010 and as 2011 approaches are running about $2 million under budget.
Library Director Nancy Ledeboer said much of the credit for the budget surplus belongs to the library staff.
"When we put the budget projections together last year, I told my staff 'just because it's in the budget doesn't mean you have to spend it,' " she said - a message they took to heart.
"We knew we needed to generate an ending funding balance," she said of the 2010 budget. "In tough economic times you have to make hard decisions. You may have planned vacation, but you don't go or maybe you planned to buy a new car but decided to hold off another year.
"We really cut back on our material spending," Ledeboer said. That means tightening the belt on little things like printer ink cartridges - using black ink rather than color when possible - and larger measures like not filling those employee vacancies.
Atha said the county also cut library maintenance by about $1 million for next year and delayed raising controlled utility costs for the libraries. He said without the May sales-tax increase, county programs will be scrambling for cash to cover the $30 million to $40 million in costs that will shift from the state to the county. If the increase is rejected, likely cuts will come in spending on new materials, personnel and library hours. The libraries generally spend $3.5 million to $5 million annually on new materials and employ about 300 permanent employees and about 200 temporary or part-time employees.
Vernon Berry says he frequents downtown's Joel D. Valdez Main Library to browse magazines like Time and Newsweek and to read out-of-town newspapers. The low cost, convenience (he lives within walking distance) and safety provided by security guards are what draw him to the library rather than other places. He says he'd keep coming even if the library had to scale back its hours or cut subscriptions to some of the magazines he reads.
Karl Petty, another Joel D. Valdez patron, said: "It's a place to get away. For me it's a place of solitude."
He reads Stephen King in the library and uses the Internet. He said he plans on taking some of the computer courses that the library offers.
Steffannie Koeneman, community relations manager for the libraries, estimates that about 5,980 people have taken job-help courses or computer courses related to job seeking at the libraries in fiscal year 2010.
Clayton R. Norman is a University of Arizona journalism student apprenticing at the Star. Contact him at 573-4244 or at starapprentice@azstarnet.com
