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Library advocates want IT funding to be full time; Council to discuss budget Thursday
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IT powers public access computers and the library catalog.
That’s not a typo. information technology, or IT, is critical to the operation of Albuquerque’s 19 libraries, said Kathleen Raskob, the vice president of the Albuquerque Public Library Foundation.
“It’s something that the library has to have in order to operate,” Raskob said. “If you go online and look at the catalog, it’s amazing — but it’s also very sophisticated.”
For the past five years, advocates have been asking for IT services funding to be included as recurring funding in the city’s budget, after the line item was first appropriated in fiscal year 2020 to be nonrecurring — making it “one time funding that is evaluated annually,” city spokesperson Staci Drangmeister said in an email to the Journal.
Currently, budget staff are deciding if the line item will be included in the final budget, Drangmeister continued. Most department budgets include a mix of recurring and nonrecurring funding, Drangmeister said, with those one-time dollars receiving “more scrutiny” to decide if they should be added to the budget multiple years in a row.
There will be a deeper dive into the Department of Arts & Culture’s budget this week, which the library falls under, Drangmeister said.
The proposed library budget for fiscal year 2025 is $16.4 million.
Since 2020, the funding has been filled every year; but because of it’s nonrecurring status, “somebody has to make sure it’s in there,” Raskob said.
Stephanie Telles, the interim co-chair for the Library Advisory Board, said the funding is not currently included in the proposed budget. Telles said she’d like to see the funding placed in this year’s budget; later on, she’d like it to become recurring funding.
Telles said if the funding is not provided, it would likely be made up by cutting more than a dozen temporary staff —who cost about $29,000 per year each to employ — to upkeep IT maintenance and licenses. The $400,000 is “basic, minimal funding”; for the past four years, the library has spent an average $564,000 on IT, Telles added.
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The Albuquerque library budget is “lean,” Raskob said. Services like staff training and the summer reading program are supported by the foundation and book sales held by the Friends of the Public Library, she said.
“The money will have to come from somewhere,” Telles said. “Oftentimes, that’s where those first sort of cuts come from.”
Telles said temporary staff help with programming, stack books and answer the phones, among other things. Without them, she said, library hours might be cut.
“With the summer coming, could you imagine having reduced hours when you have children at home?” Telles said. “The library offers a lot of free programming. So it would just be really detrimental … to have reduced hours.”
Last month, Mayor Tim Keller introduced a $1.4 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The budget will be discussed and potentially tweaked by City Council at three meetings of the Committee of the Whole, which includes all nine councilors. The first will be at 5 p.m. Thursday. The next two will be May 9 and May 16.
Council has until May 31 to finalize the city’s budget.
