Food donations will be taken to settle Spokane County library fines

Next week Spokane County residents will have the chance to get their library fines removed in exchange for a few nonperishable food items.

The sixth annual Food for Fines is being offered at all 10 Spokane County Library District branches Sunday through April 14.

The effort is held during National Library Week, as it is every year. The effort started in 2013 after the idea came up in a leadership meeting, said SCLD communication and development director Jane Baker.

Food for Fines allows people to eliminate up to $20 in fines for overdue books or damaged items and it generates food for local food banks at a time of year when donations typically drop, Baker said.

“Their shelves are a little bare,” she said. “It seemed like a win-win for everybody.”

Each donated food item removes $2 from a person’s balance. The limit is $20 per person. “I don’t recall anyone asking for more than that,” Baker said.

Amounts due for lost items or late fees that have gone to collections are not eligible for the program, Baker said.

The program has been very popular. The biggest donations have come through the Spokane Valley Library and the North Spokane Library. Donations from those libraries during the last six years have totaled 3,964 pounds of food and 3,917 pounds of food, respectively.

Overall the effort has collected just over 21,100 pounds of food and forgiven a little over $19,300 in fines in the last six years. The district does not track how many people take advantage of the Food for Fines program but Baker estimates it is in the hundreds each year.

Baker said some people who don’t owe any fines still bring in food donations, bumping up the totals. “That was a reaction we didn’t expect,” she said.

Most of the food collected goes to Second Harvest, which distributes it to food banks throughout the area. A portion of the donations are given to food banks in Cheney and Deer Park.

Any food that is nonperishable will be accepted and high protein foods like peanut butter and tuna are usually in demand, Baker said. Second Harvest provides the food donation bins and empties them, sometimes multiple times during the week.

“That’s a nice problem to have,” Baker said.