A sizeable hike in this year's budget to run the Terry Fox Library has Port Coquitlam council thinking about whether the city should check out of the Fraser Valley Regional Library (FVRL) system.
This week, the city's FVRL board rep, Coun. Laura Dupont, said she's disappointed with the library's draft 2015 budget. If adopted on Feb. 25, it would add $81,410 - or 5.29% - to the city's library bill to bring it to $1.6 million.
Dupont said the budget increase is due to a change in the FVRL funding formula, which was revised in 2013, as well as higher costs for shared services in the region. (FVRL is the largest public library system in B.C. with 24 community libraries - including Terry Fox - and serving more than 670,000 people.)
"Significant retirements," contractual salary and benefit increases, and provincial government funding cuts have also played a part in the 2.73% bump for FVRL's overall $23.2-million budget, Dupont said.
Coun. Glenn Pollock (who is also the constituency assistant to PoCo NDP MLA Mike Farnworth), blasted the province for scaling back FVRL's operating grant, calling the downloading "ridiculous We have zero control over this."
But Coun. Mike Forrest questioned FVRL's management structure, saying, "That organization is bureaucratic, like most organizations, and it can't continue to mushroom."
Coun. Dean Washington, who chairs the city's budget sub-committee, also asked council and city managers if Terry Fox Library is run efficiently and if the city could deliver library services in-house.
Councillors' concerns were raised at Monday's finance committee meeting, just after council voted to tender out its project management for the new community recreation centre. The redevelopment of the 15-acre downtown campus will include the PoCo recreation complex, the former works yard on Kelly Avenue and the library.
The topic also comes up as the city prepares its draft budget, which proposes a 1.49% boost in property taxes.
White Rock Coun. Helen Fathers, FVRL board vice-chair, said a few FVRL member municipalities - including hers - have considered opting out of the regional system. And PoCo council would be doing its "due diligence" if it were to look at the pros and cons of being part of the vast library network, she said.
Still, Scott Hargrove, FVRL's chief executive officer, argued member municipalities get good value for their tax dollars as services such as finance, marketing and IT are shared and centralized in Abbotsford.
The current funding formula is a "user-pay system, meaning the municipalities and regional districts do not subsidize each other - they pay based on their constituents' use," Hargrove wrote in an email Wednesday. "Communities control their direct costs, which include library staffing levels and open hours."
At 15,000 sq. ft., Terry Fox Library - located at the corner of Mary Hill Road and Wilson Avenue - is FVRL's fourth smallest facility per capita (0.26 sq. ft. per person) and has a dozen full- and part-time staff.
@jwarrenTC
