Municipal libraries in the Verde Valley say they have been minimally affected so far by the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors’ decision to decrease its financial contributions to them by 28%. The libraries’ staffs report that their respective cities have increased their funding for the library system, although a full-time position in Cottonwood and a short-term internship at Camp Verde have been cut.
“The municipalities have been understanding of the situation,” Yavapai County Librarian Corey Christians said. “They’ve all been there themselves, they’ve had to deal with budget challenges. They understand this is not something that anybody wants to do. They seem to be understanding the situation, and are adapting by either compensating with their own funds or finding other ways to resolve the situation.”
The county’s fiscal year 2023 funding for municipal libraries was $1.675 million, but Yavapai County District 2 Supervisor James Gregory, who represents Camp Verde and parts of Cornville, and Yavapai County District 3 Supervisor Donna Michaels, who represents Cottonwood, Sedona, Clarkdale, Jerome, the Village of Oak Creek and other parts of Cornville, voted unanimously with the rest of the board to cut library funding by $475,000 for fiscal year 2024.
Cuts to municipal libraries in the Verde Valley were:
Sedona Public Library: $76,826
Cottonwood Public Library: $47,065
Camp Verde Community Library: $25,570
Clarkdale’s Clark Memorial Library: $11,538
Jerome Public Library: $7,133
Half of these amounts will be cut this year and the remaining half will be cut the following year.
Although it shares its boundaries with the county government, the Yavapai County Library District is a political taxation subdivision of the state of Arizona and has its own independent governing body, which is also the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors. The board formally resolves itself and reconvenes as the library board to vote on library matters.
Christians expressed hope that the county will restore the funding two years from now, which will depend in part on the amount of new construction taking place in the county to increase the district’s revenue. Another option would be to increase the tax levy on homes, which would not be discussed until the budget talks for fiscal year 2026.
Sedona Public Library
Camp Verde
“We have not had to make operational changes because our town leaders and Town Council support the library 100%,” Camp Verde Community Library Director Kathy Hellman said. “That’s not to say that future budgets won’t see it differently. This year, Camp Verde had a more robust budget to work with than in years past. The big change for me has been[that] I have not been able to fund an AmeriCorps VISTA worker for 2024.”
However, CVCL had an AmeriCorps position funded for its 2023 fiscal year that has been filled only recently and will carry on through the 2024 fiscal year.
The AmeriCorps employee will expand CVCL’s mobile STEM lab, build its volunteer base to provide education and coordinate with the Science Vortex of Verde Valley to provide educational programs.
CVCL wants to take its STEM lab to schools and other libraries to provide hands-on experiences for children and families around the county or the Verde Valley.
“I think about the experiences kids have when they go to the [Arizona] Science [Center] museum in Phoenix,” Hellman said. ”Where they can experience hands-on [educational programming]. There’s so many things that our rural community doesn’t have access to. So to bring higher level STEM experiences to the community gets our kids excited about possibilities because they might [not]have heard of some areas of science before.”
Hellman cited CVCL’s partnership with Arizona State University to inform students about advances in kinesiology as an example of getting them interested in filling STEM jobs. Students were able to watch how computers allow scientists to better study the human form by tracking the movement of a body.
“[Students] were able to see how their muscles worked with the software,” Hellman said. “One of the kids said, ‘You can get a degree in exercise and help people?’ They were excited at the thought that they could do something like that. It’s introducing kids to the possibilities out there so that whatever they’re interested in, they connect and pursue that education as a career in that area they’re excited about.”
After working for the town of Camp Verde for the last 11 years, Hellman said that for much of her tenure, CCVL didn’t receive cost-of-living adjustments, was not able to hire new people and didn’t receive budget increases.
“But the last few years, the town has been in a better place financially,” Hellman said.
Jerome Public Library
Jerome Public Library Director Kathleen Jarvis pointed out that the county’s budget cuts affected its smaller libraries less than cities such as Sedona and Prescott because the reductions were based on a percentage of a given area’s contributions to the library district.
“It didn’t hurt my budget as much as it hurt the larger libraries,” Jarvis said. “The town of Jerome simply gave me the extra money, I didn’t have to make any cuts in my staff … it hasn’t made any difference.”
Cottonwood Public Library
The Cottonwood Public Library was not able to fill a brand-new full-time library public service outreach coordinator position because of the reduction, Director Ryan Bigelow said.
“Other than that, we were able to absorb the rest of the loss within the city’s budget. Unfortunate, but not catastrophic for our library or our services,” Bigelow added.
Clark Memorial Library
The Clark Memorial Library in Clarkdale is administered directly by Christians as part of an agreement to keep the facility open after the Clarkdale Town Council voted to defund it in May 2017. The library district pays for staffing and computers, with its Friends of Clark Memorial Library group paying for materials and the town of Clarkdale providing utilities and the location at no cost to the library district.
“We have some donation money that we have available for that branch that we’re going to use to offset any of the increase in costs that we’re not able to cover through the regular budget,” Christians said. “The reduction to Clarkdale is about $5,600, and we have plenty of donation money.”
