Medway, MA, May Lose Library

Town officials prefer other agencies; Wellesley PL to close branches

By Lynn Blumenstein -- Library Journal, 6/15/2006

Medway Public Library (MPL), MA, is on track to close at the end of June, as town officials see the $280,000 savings as a way to help stem an $868,600 FY07 budget deficit. The library’s budget already had been slashed 22 percent in just two years, and the governing Board of Selectmen apparently thinks it’s more prudent to axe one service than chop away at them all. The library gets the short stick in a town (pop. 14,000) that’s been “running out of money for a long time and not handling its budget very well,” MPL Board of Trustees chair Wendy Roe told LJ; voters turned down a $2.5 million tax override in April.

The budget was to be finalized at a town meeting on June 12. The library last year received a state certification waiver because it didn’t meet state criteria. If the library closes, even temporarily, state certification would be lost, as well as access to state funding and participation in the Minuteman book-sharing network. Medway has already received letters from all of the surrounding towns saying they will not serve Medway patrons.

Four full-time employees and three part-timers would lose their jobs. MPL director Patrick Marshall has already accepted a new position, beginning in August. “There are many ifs,” said Roe, “but I don’t think we’ll be closed forever.”

Two small branches of the Wellesley Free Library (WFL), MA, are scheduled to close July 1, leaving one main library in operation in a well-branched town of 26,000. The plan is the result of the May defeat by 415 votes of a property tax override that would have amounted to a $7 annual increase.

The Hills Branch, at 6,086 square feet, and Fells Branch, at 1,872 square feet, will likely be “mothballed,” said WFL director James Coduri. Materials will be moved to the three-year-old, 56,000 square foot main. Some employees will be moved to the main as well. The main library is funded by an endowment, the result of a successful five-year capital campaign.