Letters

Clarifications on library budget

 I would like to make some corrections to your story in Saturday’s paper, Nov. 20, on page V2 in the Valley Voice.  

The Liberty Lake Library budget that I proposed at the Tuesday Liberty Lake City Council meeting was actually $61,157 less than the original budget of $411,474 that had been proposed at an earlier Council meeting two weeks before. The budget figure that I presented at the beginning of my PowerPoint presentation was $350,317, which had been voted on by the Liberty Lake Municipal Library Board of Trustees at its Nov. 9 meeting. 

The service budget portion of that figure was based on a different calculation of the utilities and insurance costs.  Instead of the library paying the full cost of those items for both the police department and the library, the board of trustees believed it would be more equitable to pay only 31 percent of the $10,500 for insurance and $45,000 for utilities, since the library occupies 31 percent of the building. Thus the insurance and utilities cost for the library would be $17,368, rather than $55,500. 

 Our proposed budget of $350,317 was reduced even further when the library staff agreed to reduce library hours from 46 to 40 and take a 10 percent temporary pay cut, saving Liberty Lake an additional $32,271 and reducing our 2011 budget to $318,046, which is actually $791 less than the mayor’s budget. If you have any further questions, please call me at (509) 892-3004. 

John Loucks

President, Liberty Lake Municipal Library Board of Directors