Halfmoon Township’s Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 on Monday night to withdraw from the agreement as a funding municipality for Schlow Centre Region Library.
The vote came despite overwhelming opposition from community members in attendance and correspondence sent in advance by residents, who voiced support for fully funding the library and raised concerns about the hasty nature of the special meeting.
The ordinance approved on Monday night will “withdraw Halfmoon Township from the Schlow Centre Region Library program… effective January 1, 2024.” A municipality that wishes to withdraw from the joint articles of agreement for the library is required to pass an ordinance and give 12 months notice to the library and Centre Region Council of Governments, so the township would need the ordinance to go into effect by Dec. 31 to remove its funding obligations for the 2024 budget.
Board chair David Piper along with supervisors Charles Beck and Rose Ann Hoover voted in favor of withdrawal, saying they intend to continue funding the library at some level, but under the board’s own terms and not those determined by the existing joint articles of agreement for the library signed by the Centre Region COG’s six member municipalities.
“I personally… am not going to vote to cut the funding to Schlow Library, at least not until I get some answers anyway,” Piper said. “We have one year to have open and honest discussions with the Schlow Library to get some numbers… I know we get a lot of services for the money and I’m not saying the library is a bad buy, but it’s up to the elected officials to decide how much money and how long the contract lasts, not some arbitrary ordinance. None of you out here would sign this contract with your car repair guy, your gas salesperson, because you’re held hostage by that contract.”
Supervisor Patricia Hartle, who opposed withdrawal, questioned how the township was “being held hostage” by an agreement that only requires one year’s notice to leave and noted that no other participating municipalities have expressed problems with the contract.
Halfmoon Township has contributed to Schlow’s operating budget since 2003 and, along with the five other Centre Region COG municipalities, signed joint articles of agreement to provide financial support determined annually by the COG General Forum and based on use of the library by their residents. The funding formula accounts only for percentage of physical materials circulated by a municipality’s residents, and not use of digital materials or other resources.
In 2022, Halfmoon Township’s allocation for Schlow was $52,084, which averages to $18.67 per capita. The township also contributed $3,500 to the Centre County Library, which serves areas outside the Centre Region and which is separate from but intertwined with Schlow. For 2023, the township’s funding requirement dropped to $50,120. Supervisors also upped the contributions to the Centre County Library by $1,000.
Hoover called the township’s obligation a “blank check,” which Hartle said was not true because the board has input into the library’s annual budget and ultimately votes on its approval as part of the overall COG budget.
“I don’t think it’s a good contract,” Hoover said. “The library’s fine. We have a multitude of libraries. This needs negotiated and the only way we can negotiate it is by this ordinance and then we can move forward.”
Schlow Director Lisa Rives Collens told StateCollege.com last week that the township has “a tremendous voice” in determining the library’s budget and funding as a participating municipality through the COG, more so than if it were to negotiate individually.
For Schlow, a collective agreement with the COG municipalities provides an assurance of predictable funding that has allowed the library to be successful, Rives Collens said. Hartle echoed that on Monday, contrasting the Schlow arrangement with Port Matilda fire and EMS companies. Those emergency services have no collective agreement or guarantees with the municipalities they serve and have faced mounting financial difficulties.
“Everything we were asking for from the fire company, we have in the library,” Hartle said. “That’s a working, proven system that the people in COG saw years ago to say if we all band together we can provide better services. So we have an award-winning, superior library because six municipalities join together, give them a predictable budget. That works, so now the proposal is to pull out to go to a broken system that we know is broken over here at the fire company where everybody wants to do their own thing.”
What library services Halfmoon Township may lose is unclear. Residents will be able to utilize basic services like anyone could, but some services are only provided to residents of funding municipalities, such as remote book returns, including one at Brother’s Pizza in Stormstown; book pick-up lockers, including one launched earlier this year at Way Fruit Farm; access to the multimedia service Hoopla; and access to IT expertise.
Sharon Rovansek, the township’s representative to the Schlow Library board, said that 67% of Halfmoon residents have an active library card. She listed the myriad services Schlow provides and said township residents could lose access to some or be “last on the list” for others.
Several residents, some who use the library regularly and some who do not, said the contribution of about $50 per household annually is worth it for the betterment of the community.
“I am also saddened that as a community we are willing to make the lives of some of our constituents worse by taking away essential services,” resident Virginia Squier said. “Personally, I believe in contributing to make the good better not the good worse and with the passage of this ordinance [the latter] is exactly what we’re doing.”
Resident Ken Davis said the ordinance’s statement that withdrawing from the agreement is “in the best interests of the residents of Halfmoon Township,” is a “falsehood,” and that leaving the contract “supports ignorance.”
“Withdrawing is not in the best interest of our residents. We may still be able to get services, but you will make us freeloaders, and, I would note, rich freeloaders,” Davis said, referencing the township’s median household income of $118,000 in comparison to the county median of $66,000.
A loss in funding could also have a wider impact on services offered by Schlow, including countywide through its cooperative agreement with the Centre County Library system, Rives Collens said.
“We provide services; we move about 50,000 items throughout the county together with all of the public libraries throughout Centre County, so any impact on Schlow Library actually ricochets,” Rives Collens said. “We’re part of a bigger ecosystem… For example, if we can’t buy more copies of the latest best seller, that means that we can’t send those and rotate those through any of the libraries in Centre County.”
Community Members Voice Concerns
Among the 26 residents who spoke during public comment on Monday, only one supported withdrawing from the library agreement. Hartle added that 32 of the 35 letters received by the township opposed withdrawing.
While about 93% of those who offered public comment or letters were against withdrawal, Piper and Hoover suggested there are more residents who support withdrawing from the agreement than had been vocal about it.
Support for the library, though, was not the only reason residents opposed the ordinance to withdraw. Some suggested it was part of a continued pattern of decisions by the board being made on a whim or with a lack of transparency, including an attempt to fire the township manager, who subsequently resigned, the abolishment of the manager position, the consideration of withdrawing from C-NET and the repeal of a fire tax levy in favor of funding the fire company through the general fund, initially at a lower level than last year until supervisors agreed to add more money before the 2023 budget was passed.
The library has not been discussed at any recent meetings and the possibility for withdrawal was only broached publicly when Monday’s special meeting and proposed ordinance were advertised on Dec. 18. Several residents noted that the meeting took place the day after Christmas, on a federal holiday when the township office was also closed. Some said it seemed like the decision had already been made and was being rushed through at the end of the year.
“We need to do this with input from residents of the township,” resident Dave Carbonnell said. “This screams of secrecy and is just a terrible way to go about business and governance.”
Rovansek, the representative to the library board, said she only learned about the meeting when someone sent her a screenshot of the public notice on social media.
“I did not receive the courtesy of an email nor a phone call about this meeting,” she said. “I would really think and hope that as your representative if we really wanted to work together for the betterment of the Halfmoon Township community, we could all work together.”
Hartle and supervisor Ronald Servello both said they did not see the ordinance, which was drafted by the township solicitor, until it was published and were surprised by the language about withdrawing “from the Schlow Centre Region Library program.”
Servello, like those who voted in favor of the ordinance, also has a problem with the agreement, which he said “reads as though we have no control with pursestrings as a municipal government.” But he voted against withdrawal after expressing concerns over “timing and process.”
“There’s enough people here to demonstrate that that is an issue,” Servello said. “That’s a serious concern to me. Your opinions do matter. Every one of them.
“The way this thing is written does not give us the opportunity to sit down with them to discuss the nature of the contract itself. The way it was posted in the paper even caught me by surprise. I thought we were talking about not the program but the contract… It could have been stated that way in the public notice.”
Hartle said that withdrawing is the same as defunding because no plan is in place for how the township may contribute in the future. The township, she said, has the money to continue supporting the library under the current formula and she suggested that if supervisors wanted to consider withdrawing they should first explore the matter thoroughly.
“We took a poll in 2001 to get into this. Why would we not take a poll to see if we should get out of it?” Hartle said. “We should give ourselves time. We have the money. We can pay again in 2024 and make sure we do this properly.”
But Piper said the board can spend part of the next year discussing it and can even choose to remain in the articles of agreement.
“We have a year to discuss the matter and answer the questions before we’re locked out,” he said.
