As town funding drops out, Gilmanton’s library to temporarily close

Gilmanton’s year-round library may soon close its doors while its board of directors figures out a stable way to pay the annual costs of operation.

In recent years, two-thirds of the library’s $76,400 operating budget has been furnished by taxpayers through warrant articles at town meeting. Those typically passed by slim margins, but this month, the vote went the other way.

An article to supply $47,500 to keep the library running this year failed by 18 votes, and another article for multi-year funding was off by 29 votes.

That outcome prompted a host of donations that exceeded even the expectations of the nonprofit Gilmanton Year-Round Library Association’s board of directors, President Chris Schlegel said.

A group of middle-schoolers got in on the fundraising effort after they had the idea during a bus ride to organize a bake sale for the library’s benefit. They raised $501 selling homemade baked items Thursday, said Kendra Reed, the board of directors’ secretary.

But proceeds from bake sales aren’t enough to keep the library permanently open. Unless the library can raise the full $47,500 by April 1, it’s going to close temporarily, Schlegel said.

“On April 1, the board is going to get together again and we’re going to look at how much money has come in,” she said. “I’m not sure we’ll get there by the first, but people have been extremely generous.

“I think we’re optimistic about not being closed for too long,” she said.

At a “community conversation” earlier this month, the board has brought questions to residents, not least of which was: What if the library were owned by the town, instead of a nonprofit?

That might allay the uneasy feeling of some residents that public funds are used to prop up a privately-owned library, Schlegel said. For her part, she said that effectively “it truly is a public library, and it’s recognized that way.”

However the discussion turns out, Schlegel said she hopes the potential closure will begin a new chapter in the library’s history, closing the book on the days when the staffers anxiously awaited the vote each March to see if their funding would come through.

She noted that surrounding towns regularly supply in their budgets more money per capita than the library association has requested through its warrant articles.

“Regardless of whether we needed to close or not, we definitely were looking at the long-term plan,” she said. “Whether it remains a 501(c)3 or becomes town-owned, to me, either way would be perfectly acceptable if it meets our goal.”

The Gilmanton Year-Round Library was built across the street from the town’s kindergarten through eighth-grade school in a barn that was moved from North Hampton. It opened in 2009, at the end of a decadelong $675,000 private fundraising campaign.

Schlegel said there are two other small, niche libraries in town that are open seasonally or part-time. Before the new library’s construction, Gilmanton was one of only two towns in New Hampshire that didn’t have a year-round library, Schlegel said.

Roughly one-third of the operating budget is typically raised through fundraisers, such as the Mothers Day hanging basket sale. When the town voted down a warrant article to pay for the library’s operating expenses in the first year it was open, an anonymous donor stepped in and “provided a very generous donation,” Schlegel said.

The proposals were gaining more widespread support at town meeting before the town switched to the SB2 format of government in 2013, which allowed residents to cast votes without hearing the library’s presentation in-person. Since then, the votes have been nearly split each year.

Schlegel said the library’s directors met with various members of the municipal government this year, “trying to get input on the best means of moving forward. It’s really not a sustainable method of going to the town every year because we just don’t know what’s going to happen after March.”

That conversation resulted in the new approach of offering two warrant articles, one of which would have paid for two years of operating costs. But the voters knocked down each one.

On April 7, the library will host its second community conversation from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

“We just want to hear from the community what direction they would like us to go,” Schlegel said.



(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325 or nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @NickBReid.)