Sustainable Funding

Libraries provide essential services that people count on. Securing adequate, stable funding for a library is critical.

It is recommended* that all libraries secure funding through a public vote on their tax levy. Generating a direct relationship between the library and taxpayers ensures accountability and transparency, for when a library is providing quality library service that responds to community needs and priorities, a community is willing to invest in that library.

*Recommendation 1: “The further proliferation of the Regents’ Public Library District Model to enable all public libraries to become fully funded and governed through citizen participation and public vote.” –Creating the Future: a 2020 Vision Plan for Library Service in NYS, Recommendations of the New York State Regents Advisory Council on Libraries to the New York State Board of Regents, 2012.

• Types of Libraries – A Comparison [NYS Division of Library Development]
• Increasing Autonomy: Rechartering Your Library, by Ellen M. Bach and Robert T. Schofield, Whiteman, Osterman & Hanna, LLP
• Service Area Maps for the MHLS Region [NYS Division of Library Development]
• Public Library District Toolkit: Strategies to Assure your Library’s Legal and Financial Stability [New York State Library]
• Municipal Ballot (Chapter 414)
  • Municipal Ballot – How to go about it.
  • Inch by Inch, Row by Row: Using the Municipal Ballot Option in Education Law 259(1)(b) to Obtain Sustainable Funding for Your Library [Fourth Edition (2024)]
• School District Ballot (259 vote)
  • School District Ballot – How to go about it.
  • School District Ballot Toolkit [North Country Library System]
• Property Tax Cap [NYS Office of the State Comptroller]
  • Property Tax Cap Refresher Webinar [MHLS 9.30.2015]

 See also:

• Public Library Vote Toolbox: Know-how for Your Library’s Vote [MHLS]
• Marketing & Public Relations [MHLS]
• Advocacy [MHLS]