Mendon shows strong support for county-wide library system

By Greg Boyles

February 13, 2009 | MENDON ­ Almost 40 Mendon residents turned out at the City Council meeting Thursday night to show support for the integration of Mendon City into a Cache County library system.

The proposed integration would support libraries from every city in Cache County under a single umbrella, opening up more opportunities for Mendon residents who currently are limited to a small cottage library, said Richard Watkins, a Mendon resident.

If Mendon were to join the proposed library system, Watkins said their library would be managed and funded by Cache County.

"I would like to urge that our community participate in development of a county library," Watkins said. "There are a lot of factors, but I can see we would be disadvantaged by not participating in the process."

A petition was also given to the council by Bruce Thorne, member of the library board, with signatures from other residents in the community who support integrating into the new system.

However, this new integration would come with a tax increase.

Councilman George Deweese said the cost of a county-wide library system would be approximately $3.8 million the first year, and approximately $2.8 million the years following. This would raise taxes by approximately $70 the first year of the program and $58 a year after that, he said.

Deweese said due to the increasing needs of Mendon's own library, an increase in taxes regarding the library is inevitable.

"Either way there has to be a library tax increase to continue funding our library. $24,000 is the amount the library has said they will need this year to operate," he said.

LeAnn Durfey, a Mendon resident, said she believes integrating into the system is not only a good idea because it would make more books accessible to everyone, but it would be cheaper in the long run.

"I currently pay about $120 a year to be a member of the Logan Library," she said. "It is more expensive to be a member of Logan city's library than to pay taxes for a library for a year."

Deweese said it would be beneficial to be part of the system because anyone who pays taxes in a city under the Cache county library umbrella would be able to check out books from any library in the county. They would also have access to all of the additional resources such as computers, videos and audio equipment that is available at larger libraries.

So far Mendon city has not finalized the decision to join the county library system, nor has the county guaranteed this will happen, Deweese said. The county is still waiting to here back from all the cities to see if they are on board.

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