The library district’s draft budget for 2024 is about $3.2 million more than 2023, according to the budget that staff presented to the Garfield County Public Library District board of trustees.
A partial list of where taxpayer money is going:
• Library materials account for approximately $816,000 in 2024, compared to about $675,000 in 2023. This represents a 28% increase in print and electronic materials.
• For advertising and marketing, the 2024 budget calls for $140,500, compared to $131,500 last. The advertising and marketing budget makes up 1.24% with an increase of $9,000. “Additional promotion is needed for the expansion of cultural events, direct mailers, library card competition (and) using GPS for expanded library card sign up,” according to the report.
• Partnership spending is approximately $69,000 in 2024, compared to about $59,000 last year. The $10,000 increase comes with a membership to CLEER (Clean Energy Economy for the Region.)
A brief breakdown of the draft 2024 budget compared to 2023 is as follows:
• Revenues: $15 million in 2024 compared to $12 million in 2023. The library district gets most of its funding from a quarter-cent Garfield County sales tax and property taxes. Property taxes contributed about $1 million in 2023, according to district staffer James Larson, and is projected to bring in about $1.5 million in 2024.
• Expenditures for 2024 are projected at $11.3 million, compared to $10.3 million in 2023.
• Excess revenues over expenses at the end of 2024 are projected at about $18 million, compared to $14.5 million in 2023.
The legal notice for the 2024 draft budget was posted in the Post Independent and Citizen Telegram in early October. The draft budget can be viewed at www.GCPLD.org/about-us/finance The library board is expected to act on the budget at its December meeting and be presented to the Garfield County commissioners in January 2024.
New in the stacks
One of the many recent additions to Carbondale Library’s print collection includes “Atlas of Wild America” by Carbondale resident Jon Waterman. The hefty coffee table book was published by National Geographic and looks at more than a dozen federal wildlife areas and nature preserves. The 431-page book is filled with text, photographs, illustrations and other graphics. It’s a companion book to Waterman’s “National Geographic Atlas of the National Parks.” Waterman has written 13 other National Geographic books, including “Running Dry: A Journey from Source to Sea Down the Colorado River.”
Another new book of note is “Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy” by Carl Sferrazza Anthony.
Pillars of Light
Did you ever wonder about the inscriptions on the seven pillars on the front side of the Carbondale Library? The inscriptions include:
• “Lex et veritas”;
• “Life is a garden, dig it”;
• “A pearl is an oyster’s biography,” by Federico Fellini;
• “No snowflake ever fell in the wrong place,” a Zen saying;
• “When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing,” by Tom Robbins.
The Sopris Sun went to the ultimate expert on how the quotes and phrases found placement on the pillars — stained-glass artist Shannon Muse, who lives less than 50 yards from the library.
“It was a community project,” Muse stated. “Volunteers helped me.”
The community art project took place in 2012-13 when the library was under construction. The word went out for folks to submit quotes, phrases and ideas. The art project’s entrants were responding to the question “What do libraries or literature mean to you,” Muse explained.
Volunteers helped Muse create the green glass mosaic in her studio. “There are 100,000 individual pieces,” she continued. The pieces all came from recycled glass.
Muse said a Carbondale librarian entered the Dewey Decimal system number for comic books. Muse herself sprinkled in lots of numbers and the alphabet from A-Z for little kids to look for.
Someone suggested the phases of the moon, which are up high, on the first pillar to the west of the library’s front entrance.
At least two sponsors for the project have their logos embedded in the columns: The Carbondale Rotary and Alpine Bank.
The work of art is titled “Pillars of Light/Pilares de Luz”, which is noted on a plaque on the northeast corner of the building.