The Bradford County Library (BCL) will lose 30% of its funding for 2025, a smaller loss compared to commissioners’ proposed 50% cut earlier this year.
Commissioners passed a $71.9 million budget by a 2-1 vote at Thursday’s meeting. The budget, which is $92,374 higher than the county’s proposed 2025 budget, earmarks an additional $40,000 to the library. It also keeps the bookmobile under the library’s control for $45,000 – a small win for library supporters.
The updated budget reduces the library's funding from $471,106 to $328,666, including the bookmobile, representing 0.46% — still less than half of 1% — of the county's budget. It also cuts the library’s hours of operation from 65 to 47 hours and staffing from four full-time and three part-time employees to one full-time position and five part-time positions.
Commissioner Zachary Gates was the sole ‘nay’ vote. He argued in favor of raising taxes to prevent a larger tax hike in the future. The county, he said, had to cut funding for most of its departments because it hasn’t raised taxes since 2009.
“So, I just have serious reservations about adopting a budget that is not appropriately planned, because when [it] bites, it's going to come and it's going to bite hard," said Gates.
Bradford County’s real estate millage rate is still 10.43 mills.
The average Bradford County home costs $189,768. A property owner with a home valued that much owed $1979.28 this year, or about $165 a month.
Commissioners Doug McLinko and Daryl Miller defended the millage rate. McLinko criticized Gates’s proposal to raise taxes on "seniors" and "working families."
“Inflation has gone out of sight. All I know is people are struggling. Now is not the time…particularly with people that are really struggling, seniors, working families – struggling to drive the kids to school, to fill up their oil tanks,” said McLinko.
Some residents spoke out in favor of a higher millage rate to protect community services.
Retired teacher Donna Conforti’s lived on Liberty Corners Road in Towanda for the past ten years. She begged commissioners to stop changing “one of the last free service[s] for families and seniors.”
“You talk about seniors who are struggling. You talk about families that are struggling. I'm a retiree. You use the library constantly. Down there [you] see all the different people that come in and out [of the library.] You have stripped it down to nothing,” said Conforti.
Canton Borough resident Matt Jennings argued the board is failing to address the county’s aging tax base by not bolstering community services like the county library.
“I don't see a lot of effort by the county to try and address that aging population, to try and attract young people to come into the county, or to encourage those young people who graduate from our schools to come back after college or after the army,” said Jennings.
He also questioned whether commissioners will later close the library after cutting down its resources.
Kim Pitcher, who unsuccessfully ran for commissioner in 2023 and for state Senate against incumbent Gene Yaw last month, claimed McLinko reduced the library’s budget and fired its interim director as an act of censorship against library content.
She referenced a comment McLinko made on the Average Joe Show, a podcast hosted by Joe Carreon.
He said, “I am not anti-library. I’m anti-crap in libraries, I’ll tell you that much. [I] don’t want to see the drag queens and all this other stuff going on in our libraries … I’m also not going to fund nonsense that shouldn’t be done … with our children.”
This is the second county meeting where residents and reporters spoke about McLinko’s comments on the podcast.
Pitcher said during a recent Friends of the BCL meeting, the library’s citizen group, that she will review whether McLinko could be impeached because of his comments on the podcast. On Thursday she added, “It was just a few short weeks after this, our library director was fired and escorted out by sheriff deputies.”
Interim Director Rebecca Troup-Hodgdon was fired on Nov. 18 after serving as the director since Singer’s resignation. She had never been permanently named to the post.
BCL’s unstable future
The Bradford County Library’s been in danger since Aug. 2023, when commissioners proposed its closure during a secret meeting with library board members.
Gates, who was elected in Nov. 2023, said on Thursday in response to worried residents, “the loss to me would be completely losing our library.”
“We live the fight another day…I think the broader issue that I hope to raise today is just regardless of what the department is going down the line, there are serious conversations (over the library’s budget) and you're seeing the tip of the iceberg here in terms of what those serious conversations are going to have to be year over year,” said Gates.
Friends President Anna Jennings promised the organization will fight to keep the library open. The Friends debated possible litigation against county commissioners for holding library meetings without public participation in violation of the Sunshine Act.
The state’s Sunshine Act mandates government agencies to only take official action during open and public meetings.
Anna Jennings said she could not comment on litigation.
Commissioners also approved a resolution to issue a waiver to the library to allow a librarian without a master’s degree to serve as interim director until a permanent director is hired. An interim director has not been hired at this time.
The board also has a RFP, request for proposal, out for a library consultant to work on changing the library from being county-funded into an independent nonprofit. This is the county’s third RFP for a consultant. Commissioners promised last December that a consultant would be hired before they make any changes to the library – including the library’s budget.
Now, with staff cuts and a reduced budget, Hugh Austin, treasurer of the Bradford County Library Board of Directors, says the library might have to become a nonprofit to survive.
“We’re going to have to look for funding elsewhere,” if the library loses its county funding, explained Austin. “And we're all drawing from the same pool, you know, so it might hurt other libraries, especially the smaller ones.”
The Bradford County Commissioners next meeting is Dec. 26 at 10 a.m. at the Bradford County Courthouse, 301 Main St, Towanda.
