Stakes are high for Spokane Public Library as it recovers from pandemic

On a drizzly Friday afternoon at the Liberty Park Library in Spokane, there’s a birthday party being held for a baby who just turned 1.

It’s taking place in a meeting room and can’t be heard by patrons perusing the stacks or using a computer, though some kids from the party are being watched by Katie Bunch Smith as they play in the jungle-themed indoor playground at one side of the main library space.

Bunch Smith is a peer support employee with Maddie’s Place, which provides care for infants who were exposed to drugs such as fentanyl in the womb and were then born addicted and in withdrawal.

“We’re utilizing the library for the free rooms for the birthday party, and then sometimes we bring moms down here to rent movies and check out books,” she said.

In a nearby room, Colin Stewart, a community technology coordinator for the Spokane Public Library system, sits with his laptop waiting for someone to come ask him a question.

He’s hosting Tech Talk at the Liberty Park branch Friday, which helps adults with basic questions about their computers, phones and other devices, and rotates between the different branches. It’s a slow day – things tend to pick up before Christmas, when people ask him for recommendations on what kind of tech to buy as a present, or to figure out why they’re having trouble texting their grandkids.

By Saturday, he’s hosting Game Developer Club at the South Hill branch, where teens can come in for up to four hours and learn how to code a basic video game, bouncing ideas off each other and coming to Stewart when they hit a wall. It’s a new program, and a bit experimental, hoping to build on the success of a similar weeklong program that ran this summer.

Events, clubs and other programming are part of the new emphasis of the Spokane Public Library as it transitions to current community demands and continues to recover from the pandemic.

A lot is at stake for the Spokane Public Library system this month, with voters being asked whether to renew a levy that makes up around 18% of the department’s entire yearly budget.

If voters don’t approve the renewal request on the Feb. 13 special election ballot, it’s not clear what would be cut, said Alina Murcar, marketing and communications manager for the Spokane Public Library. If passed, the levy would bring in approximately $2.5 million in 2025; the remainder of the library department’s revenue comes directly from the city’s general fund.

Library leaders will “conduct outreach within the community” to help determine cuts if the levy fails, Murcar said in an email.

Murcar pointed to how services have changed since voters overwhelmingly approved the levy in 2013 and renewed it in 2017. Today, every library in the system is open seven days a week for 58 hours; before 2013, several libraries including Indian Trail and Hillyard were only open 22.5 hours per week and were closed on Sundays.

If renewed by voters, the library’s property tax would collect 7 cents for every $1,000 of property value in Spokane, meaning the owner of a $400,000 home could expect around $28 of their property tax payment in 2025 to go to the library.

The pandemic

Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, circulation at the Spokane Public Library system still has not fully recovered.

In 2023, over 1.2 million items were checked out from the local library, including physical and digital books, CDs and other items. That’s around 200,000 more than were checked out in 2020, but still 34% fewer than in 2019.

Local circulation was hit harder in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic than in the country as a whole. Nationwide circulation decreased around 24% between 2019 and 2020, according to data collected by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. In Spokane, that initial drop was closer to 44%.

But while the pandemic caused circulation to plummet, it was on the decline for years before. Circulation in the past decade peaked in 2016 with 2.3 million items checked out, declining each year to 1.9 million in 2019.

It’s not an isolated trend. Library use nationwide had been steadily on the decline since 2010, according to data collected by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. That earlier nationwide peak has largely been attributed to the recession; a more than century-old truism called the librarian’s axiom states that patrons turn to libraries during bad economic times, which bore out in research conducted in 2022 by Michael R. Mabe, director of library services for the Chesterfield County Public Library in Virginia.

As traditional library use has declined, institutions across the country, including the Spokane Public Library, have had to adapt. In 2018, when voters approved a $77 million bond to improve the many buildings in the system, library officials made two primary promises for how the system would improve: more meeting space, and places for children and families to gather, such as the new indoor playground in the South Hill library.

One of the new facilities built after the bond, The Hive, doesn’t hold a single book that can be checked out. Instead, the space is almost wholly dedicated to free meeting rooms that can hold upward of 100 people, as well as four artist-in-residence studios. Overall, meeting room capacity has increased 500% in recent years.

In-person visits to local libraries, which held steady above 900,000 per year between 2014 and 2019, plummeted during the pandemic, with none in 2020 and only 182,000 in 2021. But there were over 1.1 million visits in 2023, not only a full recovery, but a record.

“Library usage has evolved not just to collections but also to these wide resources we offer,” Murcar said. “Library usage has evolved over time to better meet the needs of their community.”

In addition to increased meeting space and people visiting the libraries because of the play spaces, Murcar credits the increase of in-person visits to the libraries’ various programs, such as story times for children, workshops and other events. Though program attendance hasn’t fully recovered from the pandemic, it has rebounded better than overall circulation, decreasing roughly 21% from 72,000 visitors in 2019 to 57,000 last year.

Murcar also noted that Spokane’s libraries have increasingly been a place of refuge for homeless people, particularly in times of extreme weather. Spokane libraries are an official part of the city’s warming and cooling shelter system and also offer shelter during smoke events.

Taxes would go up

While voters are being asked to renew an existing levy, taxes would jump if the renewal is approved.

The library will take in nearly $1.24 million directly through the levy this year, jumping to approximately $2.5 million in 2025 if the levy is approved.

Levies and property tax rates are complicated and vary significantly depending on the type of taxing district.

For example, school district levies ask voters to approve a certain amount of overall taxes collected and estimate how much that will cost individual taxpayers. If the Spokane Public Schools levy is approved, the district will take in $95 million in 2025 and estimates that this will cost property owners $2.50 per $1,000 in assessed value, adding up to $1,000 for a $400,000 home.

But if property values increase – as they did every year during the last levy – the tax rate decreases at the same pace and only the total amount of taxes collected by the district stays the same.

Library levies are initially the opposite. When voters are asked to renew a tax rate of 7 cents per $1,000 in assessed value, that’s exactly what the tax rate will be in the first year of the levy, while the total amount collected, an estimated $2.5 million in 2025, could fluctuate. This is the same rate approved in 2013 and renewed in 2017, and what library officials point to when they say that the tax rate won’t be changed.

But that’s only in the first year. Every year after that until a levy is renewed, the total amount collected for the levy can only increase a small amount, usually 1%, even if housing prices increase dramatically during that time, effectively decreasing the tax rate over the life of the levy.

The current seven-year library levy, which expires next year, has been in effect from 2017 through 2024. Over that time, the assessed value in Spokane city limits has more than doubled from $16.7 billion to $34.9 billion, but the amount collected by the library levy has only increased roughly 6% from $1.17 million to $1.24 million, with the rate effectively cut in half during that time.

If voters approve renewing the three-year levy this year until 2028, the rate will jump back up to 7 cents per $1,000 in assessed value and the amount collected by the levy will more than double in its first year, but will only increase slightly every year afterward until the next renewal.

Atypically, this won’t mean that the Spokane Public Library can expect a million more dollars in its budget next year if voters approve the levy.

There has been a handshake agreement with city during the past seven years to effectively subsidize the library budget as though the levy’s tax rate hadn’t fallen dramatically during that time, Spokane’s Chief Financial Officer Matt Boston said.

Over seven years, the city’s general fund has been tapped to provide an additional $3.9 million to the library system, in addition to the over $7 million that goes each year from the general fund to the library system. The agreement was made at the time so the library system could recover from a tenuous financial position it had been in since the early 2000s, Murcar wrote in an email.

“This gave us the chance to revive the organization based on a direct reflection of local economic growth,” Murcar wrote.

Amid growing concerns over the health of the city’s overall budget, particularly as the city leaders gear up to ask voters to approve higher taxes to fill a hole in the general fund, that handshake agreement won’t be made again going forward, Boston said.

“It’s been a challenge for the general fund,” he said. “This one is a small levy compared to the overall ask the city has.”

Murcar wrote that the library system has a better financial footing now than it did seven years ago.