On Oct. 2, the Garfield County Public Library District (GCPLD) Board of Trustees approved a policy on second reading protecting the personal information of library patrons and staff from federal immigration authorities.

The policy was drafted in response to C.R.S. Section 24–74–103, which states that state agency employees may not disclose personal identifying information which is not already publicly accessible for the purposes of assisting federal immigration authorities, except as required by a subpoena, warrant or court order.

GCPLD’s new policy reiterates the above state legislation while also stating that GCPLD employees shall not request information from patrons that might indicate immigration status. Protected information includes place of birth, immigration or citizenship status or information from passports, alien registration cards, permanent resident cards or employee authorization documents.

Any publicly funded library found to have intentionally violated this legislation is subject to an injunction and a fine of up to $50,000.

Presently, GCPLD retains the names, phone numbers and emails of its patrons.

“We don’t really keep much information with regards to immigration status,” said Treasurer John Mallonee, “so we wouldn’t have that information to turn over anyway.”

A first reading of the draft policy was held in August but remained unchanged since then. GCPLD’s policy was modeled off of other public library districts hastier in passing similar policies, namely Weld and Adams counties.

The unanimously passed policy will be posted online for public viewing and distributed among “Hispanic-oriented groups” with whom GCPLD has previously interacted.

Library reviews finances
Next year, GCPLD will run with a deficit budget, garnering $854,000 less in revenue in 2026 compared with 2025. However, Treasurer Mallonee explained that the deficit is due to a revenue spike in 2022 which prompted building upgrades over the following several years. While expenditures for remodeling have caused a deficit next year, funds for said expenditures are drawn from that 2022 revenue spike. 

“Ordinarily, [the deficit] would be a cause for great concern, but it’s not, because we planned for this,” Mallonee said. “It’s a large deficit budget, but we’re fine.” Currently, GCPLD still operates within its revenues and dips into reserves for capital projects.

In addition, a 1.0 mill levy applied nearly two decades ago to finance the debt for building or remodeling GCPLD’s six branches is slated to sunset in two years. While the mill levy produced a variable amount of revenue each year, the debt has been paid at a fixed rate of approximately $1.7 million per year. Any additional revenue from that mill levy has been allocated to facility operations.

The additional revenue for operations, averaging $1.02 million yearly, or approximately 0.36 of the 1.0 mill levy, has varied significantly over the past few years, jumping from approximately $482,000 in 2022 to $2.33 million in 2024.

Without a new, voter-approved tax, this additional revenue for facility operations will disappear in 2027 when the mill levy is set to expire and the debt incurred from remodeling is completely repaid. Funding for facility operations will then be drawn out of GCPLD’s existing 1.5 mill levy which was approved in 2019 and operates in perpetuity.

Chief Financial Officer Kevin Hettler stated that a new mill would need to be introduced in order to provide additional funding for facility operations and that would have to be passed by a new ballot measure. The size of such a mill will be the subject of further discussion by the Board of Trustees. Hettler suggested using the 10-year average of 0.36 as a minimum benchmark and adjusting for inflation.

For the new mill to be present on 2026’s November ballot, the Board will have to decide on a value by August of next year.

The board’s next meeting will take place on Nov. 6 at the Silt Library at 2pm.