Cuts prompt Bedford library to reduce hours

A Bedford County community staple has announced layoffs and a slash in operating hours in response to state and county cuts.

The Bedford County Library announced Thursday that it is cutting hours and staff.

"The budget crisis has been building for several months. The layoffs did not come as a surprise. One employee even told me, 'Thanks for keeping us on as long as you did,'" director Leslie Rock said in an e-mail. "I tried to give them hope for the future by explaining that librarians throughout Pennsylvania will be working hard in the coming year to get the state legislature to completely restore state aid to public libraries."

One full-time and two part-time circulation desk employees were laid off, he said.

The layoffs and reduction in hours will go into effect New Year's Day.

The library is losing about 23 operating hours a week after state and county cuts forced it to cut $50,000 from its 2010 budget of $230,000, Rock said.

In 2009, the budget was $280,000.

"The heart of library operations - the book budget - will be a flexible line item," he said. "Funds for the library's book budget will be supplemented by the library's fundraising appeal to the community in January."

The Mount Union Branch of the Huntingdon County Library had a bit of good cheer come its way, however.

An anonymous donor halted the closing of the Huntingdon County Library System branch location after the library board had considered a shutdown.

The branch received a $20,000 donation with a stipulation that the community had to match the gift, Executive Director Nancy Holland said. The community has come through with nearly all the money after raising more than $19,000, she said.

The amount will cover the $40,000 cut in state aid and will keep the branch open in 2010, she said.

The generous donation cannot alleviate all the library's budget woes, however, because the county is considering a minimum 5 percent cut, and the state economy is still wobbly, she said.

Fundraising efforts are in the works, she said.

"Stay tuned," she said.

Hollidaysburg Area Public Library hasn't had to make any changes yet but is working on making a funding gap of about $17,000, Director Janet Eldred said.

The library was in the hole $13,047 in September, and the board voted to hold out until November to see if the Blair County Library System Board decided to use a funding formula to disburse library state aid.

If the funds were disbursed using the formula, the Hollidaysburg library was looking at only a $7,000 gap, Eldred had said during an October board meeting.

Hollidaysburg received about $49,000, Blair County Library System Administrator Tim Salony said.

The system board decided to make a 20 percent cut straight across the eight county libraries rather than apply a funding formula, which would dip mostly into the Altoona Area Public Library's budget, Salony said. Altoona is the largest library in the county system and serves the most people, he said.

The state stopped using the funding formula - 25 percent divided among the county's eight libraries, 65 percent based on the local money raised from the year before, and 10 percent on population - four years ago, but handed the decision back to counties after the latest budget, Altoona's executive director Debbie Weakland had said in a previous interview.

The board considered the county as a whole when making its decision and went with what they saw as fair, Salony said.

Mirror Staff Writer Amanda Clegg is at 949-7030.