By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post
With so much uncertainty, the Ellis Public Library Board recently decided to opt out of a vote on a proposed Ellis County Library.
According to Ellis Public Library Board Chairperson Tracey Andrews, the Ellis Public Library Board made the final decision, in a unanimous vote, to opt out of the County Library at their April 29 meeting. The board informed the Ellis City Council of its decision at the city's May 6 meeting.
Andrews said the library board's goal was to ensure the library was in the best possible place. She said that after talking with other libraries in Kansas that have gone through something similar, there were just too many unanswered questions.
"The lack of guaranteed funding for our library (and) there was no guaranteed representation for us in the future and just so many other unknown factors," Andrews said. "We couldn't sign the dotted line without some sort of contract or something on paper for us."
Funding for all Ellis County libraries has been a driving factor in the push to put the Ellis County Library question on the ballot.
The Hays and Ellis Public libraries are funded by taxes collected by their respective cities, while taxes collected in rural Ellis County and Victoria fund the Central Kansas Library System.
In March, the Ellis County Commission voted to ask the rural residents to vote on creating an Ellis County Library. If approved, a taxing district would be created, and the county would leave the Central Kansas Library System.
It was estimated Ellis County could collect almost $300,000 in local tax revenue, which could be distributed to the three public libraries in Ellis County and the three public school district libraries.
Because the Ellis Library Board elected to opt out of the vote, the Ellis community taxes will remain the same. The city collects the taxes and then distributes the funds to the library.
Andrews said if they had opted into the county library and it had been approved by the voters, their tax dollars would have been distributed across the county. While the Ellis Library Board members want to support Hays and the rest of the county, the current system keeps the funds local to the Ellis community.
“We felt that we wanted to keep money in Ellis versus going to the county,” Andrews said. “The local money stays local, and it's guaranteed. If we would have opted in and the vote was yes, we would have been proposed to get $90,000, but that wasn't guaranteed money.”
According to the library board, the city collects about $70,000, with a total library budget close to $87,000.
Andrews said that even though the Ellis City Library elected not to vote on the county library, it will lose services from the Central Kansas Library System if rural voters approve the taxing district.
That would then require the Ellis Public Library to contract with the Central Kansas Library System for its services for $20,000, and it would also lose funding it receives from the Central Kansas Library System.
“If the rural voters vote yes to this, the money will stay local to our communities, which is great,” Andrews said. “But then they would not provide services to us as a whole anymore. We will have to partner with them individually to receive services.”
Andrews said they wanted to stress to the residents of Ellis and the surrounding communities that they really tried to “do their due diligence” when they considered their decision. The board even brought in legal counsel to help work through some of the issues and questions they had.
She said conversations with counsel confirmed a lot of the questions they had following the April 22 joint meeting with the Ellis County Commission, Ellis City Council, Hays Library Board and USD 388 Board of Education.
"Our legal counsel, who worked with a library situation very similar to ours, just basically confirmed all of our thoughts," Andrews said. "We knew, 'OK, we're on the right track,' This is what we probably need to do."
Many of the members present at the April 22 joint meeting said they had an issue with the timeline.
The idea of a county library was presented to most of the board early in March, and because of the August election, they were given an early May deadline to make a decision.
Andrews said the board was first approached by Hays Public Library Director Brandon Hines March 4, giving them roughly eight weeks to gather all the information they could.
“We visited with the commissioners asking, you know, can we have contracts, can we have this stuff, and things just weren’t in place yet,” Andrews said. “I feel that if that was what would have been brought in sooner, we could have maybe got some stuff in order, whether it be consults or agreements, or maybe more of an understanding.”
Andrews said the board members liked the idea of a county library that did not consume the Ellis Library and thought it was worth more research.
“That was really a great thought, but it was a little too late at that point. We couldn't explore that because we had to have an answer,” Andrews said.
Andrews said the board has received a mixed reaction from the public following its decision, but she said members are confident in their decision. While they are open to listening to proposals in the future, they will make sure they are doing what’s best for the Ellis Public Library.
"If we can figure out a way to make something work, I think we'd be on board with it," Andrews said, "as long as it is a positive for our community."