The Pella Public Library is citing increasing costs for electronic services and a reduction of funding from Marion County as to why rural residents will no longer have access to those resources.
A letter was sent to rural Marion County residents with Pella library cards by the Board of Trustees, which indicates an April 9th decision to end access to Hoopla, Bridges, Kanopy, and the Adventure Pass program for those individuals. Service would continue as usual for City of Pella residents. This does not impact any other service to those living outside of the city.
In the notification, the Board of Trustees encouraged those impacted to contact the Marion County Board of Supervisors.
“We hope to be able to reinstate these resources for residents of Rural Marion County in the future if consistent and sufficient levels of funding are provided.”
KNIA/KRLS received details about the changes in funding, showing the cost of the impacted electronic services has increased from $22,800 in fiscal year 2022 to $40,700 in the fiscal year that ended on June 30th. This is coupled with a decision by the Friends of the Pella Public Library reducing their support of Hoopla and fluctuating county resources over the past four years (numbers below reflect the direct allocation to Pella from the Board of Supervisors):
FY21/22: $51,250
FY22/23: $30,000
FY23/24: $43,700
FY24/25: $40,000
The new funding number was determined during the Marion County Board of Supervisors Work Sessions on January 24th and 26th (see above). As part of statutory requirements, the county needed to fund $62,485 through a rural levy of $.0675 to all city libraries in Pella, Knoxville, Pleasantville, Bussey, and Melcher-Dallas, and the Board since 2020 had supplemented the base amount up to $95,000 in total for those entities. That overall number was cut by $15,000 this year, and the board cited salary increases to county employees and support of other city projects through bonding as to why they made the reductions.