Funding changes fracture support for Washington County library levy among city leaders

With Washington County voters weighing whether to renew a levy for library services in the November election, support for the measure among city leaders — who the county usually relies on to publicly back the measure — has splintered.

Elected officials in Beaverton, Tigard and Tualatin are concerned about proposed changes to the way the county distributes funds to the 16 libraries within the Washington County Cooperative Library Services system.

In particular, Beaverton leaders are so frustrated by the changes that they do not currently support the levy, believing the new funding model would have Beaverton residents get less out of their library despite paying more.

The rift comes as the county and cities alike face tough budget constraints, with the county shrinking the amount from its general fund allocated to the libraries.

In November’s election, Washington County will ask voters to renew and increase the current five-year library levy, which funds about 45% of total countywide library expenses. Because of rising demand and costs at the libraries, the county said it could not maintain the current level of service at county libraries without an increase.

The measure voters will see on their ballot is for a 37 cent per $1,000 assessed value of a property, 15 cents more than the existing library levy, which expires next June. According to the county, typical homeowners with an assessed property value of $368,400 would pay $129 a year for the levy. If the measure fails, the county said there will be significant reductions in library hours, offerings, events and other services.

Prior to moving forward with the levy proposal the county took a look at its own system for distributing money to each library branch. As smaller libraries had previously raised concerns about the system, the county specifically looked at ways to make it more equitable.

“Our goal is to make sure everyone in Washington County has equitable access to library services,” Commissioner Nafisa Fai said.

With the help of a consultant, the county began that work in 2021. The analysis resulted in a proposal for a new library funding model, which is when cities like Beaverton, Tualatin and Tigard became concerned.

Under the current model, the county decides how much money to give to an individual library based on how many books are checked out there.

The county found, however, that this model was creating a feedback loop of inequity as the better-funded libraries had more resources and offerings, making them more popular, which meant they would continue to receive more county money. Conversely, fewer people were visiting the libraries with fewer resources.

Now, instead of circulation, the county has proposed basing the funding off of geography — connecting the amount of county funds each library receives to the number of people living within a certain area around the library.

Nearly everyone involved in these conversations has noted Washington County’s unique library services model. In Washington County, nine city governments run 11 libraries. The county’s other five libraries — which are in unincorporated areas with no city government — are run by three local nonprofits.

The libraries all receive some portion of their funding through WCCLS, which is a department of the county government. The WCCLS also provides coordination between the libraries for things like inter-library loans, and oversees the digital collections of e-books, audiobooks and movies.

Local librarians said what makes Washington County unique is having both cities and nonprofits run the libraries with support from the county-run WCCLS. Elsewhere, libraries are typically either run by the county or the city.

Larger cities voice concerns

Beaverton Mayor Lacey Beaty started raising concerns about the proposed changes in a June 10 letter to the county board of commissioners. Over the next three months, she would send five more letters, each increasing in urgency and frustration.

Though the proposed funding structure has changed several times since then to address various concerns, Beaty’s main issue with the model has remained the same: Beaverton would receive less money from the county for its library than before, even though the Beaverton library serves patrons from across Washington County. She was also frustrated that Beaverton paid more of its own money into the library than the smaller cities and nonprofits paid into theirs.

With no city cash backing them, the nonprofit-run libraries rely on the county for nearly all of their funding, which Beaty suggests is unfair.

“We provide these services because we contribute over 50% of the funds,” Beaty said during an August meeting with WCCLS staff. “These libraries are not contributing nearly enough. If they want to play in the big boy arena, they need to put big boy dollars up.”

Beaty pointed out that even though Beaverton has a population of about 100,000 — the figure that was used to calculate Beaverton’s share of funding under the new model — its libraries served more than 500,000 patrons in the past two years.

Tualatin Mayor Frank Bubenik and his colleagues on the city council shared similar concerns at a Sept. 22 meeting where the levy was discussed.

As Bubenik put it, the county historically “propped up” the libraries in unincorporated areas with general fund revenue. Now, he said because the county’s general fund is hurting, the county is relying on the levy funds for the nonprofit libraries, which cuts into the amount of levy funds going to the city libraries.

Bubenik told OPB that Tualatin, Tigard and Beaverton have continued discussing these concerns with county staff, but unlike Beaverton, the Tualatin City Council still decided to support November’s levy. The Tualatin council has a message in favor of the levy in the voter’s pamphlet.

The Tigard City Council did not support the levy in the voter’s pamphlet but Tigard Public Information Officer Kelsey Anderson said the council will continue discussing its concerns with the county.

Beaverton and Tigard are the second and third largest cities in the county; Tualatin is sixth.

In an interview with OPB, Beaty said she would love to support the levy, as long as Beaverton got its fair share.

In Hillsboro — the largest city in Washington County and county seat — Mayor Beach Pace said despite concerns about the funding model, supporting the levy was crucial.

How much would each library get under the new model?

The new funding model still has to be approved by county commissioners and the WCCLS Executive Board, which is made up of the commission, WCCLS staff, city administrators from the nine cities and executives from the three nonprofits.

But under the current proposal, a larger share of levy funding would go toward smaller libraries than under the previous model.

Aloha, an unincorporated nonprofit library and North Plains, a small city-run library, would see the greatest increase. Aloha’s county allocation would nearly triple, from $585,000 to just under $1.6 million in the 2026-2027 fiscal year.

According to Aloha library director Terri Palmer, this increase would be “life-changing” for her community. More county funds would allow the library to provide more programming, expand hours and better serve the community overall. It would also allow the library to hire more staff and pay them appropriately, she said.

She said it would also allow library staff the bandwidth to connect with local schools and preschools, as some of the county’s larger libraries do.

As an unincorporated area with no city government, Palmer said the library serves as a main gathering spot for the community, particularly teens and seniors. With additional funding, the library could increase programming particularly for these age demographics.

Over the years, Palmer said the library has also grown its role beyond typical library services. Palmer said it recently undertook its 5th annual school supply drive and has started a small food pantry after the recent closure of local food banks.

The small city-run North Plains library would receive the second largest funding increase. The new funding model would more than double the county’s contribution to the North Plains Library from $209,000 to $512,000. Beaverton would see a 7% increase, from $6.8 million to $7.3 million. Tigard and Tualatin would both see an increase of 5% with Tigard’s county allocation raising from $4.3 million to $4.5 million and Tualatin’s from $1.9 million to $2 million.

Due to shrinking budgets at both the county and the city, along with growing costs, this increase in levy funds would not translate to more services for the Beaverton libraries, according to Beaty.

Beaverton’s Murray Scholls library, the smaller of the city’s two branches, would see a reduction in hours, and the libraries could lose their bookmobile, Beaty said. The Murray Scholls library previously reduced its hours in September 2023.

In Banks, the current proposal would give the small city-run library an additional $256,000 a year, double their previous allocation.

Banks Mayor Marsha Kirk said over the years the library has managed to provide a great service to the community with limited funds thanks to the hard work of staff and volunteers and fundraising by the nonprofit Friends of the Library. The levy, and the proposed funding changes, would only allow the library to better serve the community, she said.

Kirk said she understood why some of the larger cities are frustrated with the proposal.

“But it seems like WCCLS is making an attempt to be more inclusive to all libraries,” Kirk said. “What seems to have been several years of favoring the larger ones could have been adjusted before, so it would not be such a dramatic loss now. I just hope for all of the Washington County libraries and their users that this levy passes.”

Elsewhere in the county, the nonprofit that runs the Bethany and Cedar Mill libraries would receive a 7% increase under the current proposal, up to $5.4 million from $5 million for the two libraries. Similarly, the nonprofit that runs the libraries in Garden Home and West Slope would get a 23% increase from $1.4 to $1.7 million.

What does equitable library funding mean?

The county’s main idea behind reworking the funding model was to address inequities with the system and ensure the funds were more equitably distributed.

To achieve this, the consultant WCCLS worked with applied a “social vulnerability index” which takes into account socioeconomic status, age, household characteristics, race and ethnicity, housing type and transportation. WCCLS and the consultant used this index to establish geographical boundaries around the libraries off which to base the funding allocated to each library.

Still, leaders across the county feel the proposal isn’t truly equitable. But they can’t agree on what equitable means.

Leaders in Tualatin, which is 20 miles from the county seat in Hillsboro— where county resources are easier to access — felt geographic disadvantages were not being considered.

In Beaverton, councilors mentioned the city is one of the state’s most racially diverse and questioned whether it was “equitable” to raise other libraries’ funding more than theirs.

Jerianne Thompson, Tualatin’s library director who also works as the diversity, equity and inclusion officer, noted that all these different understandings of “equity” complicate the county’s task of making the funding model more equitable.

“We do not have a common, shared understanding among partners as to how we are defining ‘service equity’ or ‘funding equity’ for libraries,” Thompson told OPB. “Which means it is now hard to evaluate whether our new methodology improves either.”

Centralized Collections management

The funding changes aren’t the only proposal causing consternation in the library system.

As WCCLS looked at changing its funding model, it also looked at ways to save money. One idea was centralizing collections, meaning individual libraries would no longer curate their own catalogues.

This would reduce redundancies across the system and free up staff at the libraries for other needs, according to WCCLS Manager Lisa Tattersall. Libraries may also choose to eliminate positions that previously handled collections management, which would translate to savings for the libraries, Tattersall added. The goal is to shift this work to WCCLS by July 2027.

But some librarians feel localized collections management is a key part of what makes each library unique.

Palmer said Aloha librarians have spent the past 13 years building its collection from scratch.

“We’re all one county and one cooperative but there’s a special flavor to every library,” Palmer said. “There’s diversity across the county in profession and interest and industry and culture. It’s really fun to see what different libraries have crafted over the years.”

Palmer and Thompson, the library director in Tualatin, worry centralizing the collections will mean the libraries lose that “local flavor.”

Thompson also worried about the proposed timeline.

“That, in my opinion, is insufficient time for the level of planning and sheer number of decisions to be made in order to bring 12 (nine city partners and three non-profits) different approaches and policies together into one model,” she said.

According to Tattersall, WCCLS is unsure how much money centralizing the library system will save and how many WCCLS employees it will require, but the agency feels the proposed timeline allows enough time to answer these questions.

What comes next?

The county board of commissioners will vote on whether to approve the proposed funding changes later this month. It will then have to be approved by the WCCLS executive board.

Voters meanwhile, will decide Nov. 4 whether to continue funding nearly half of all county library services.