South Jersey libraries, experts in lending, may themselves be living on borrowed time as repeated decreases in property tax revenue and slashed state aid continue to force many libraries to make some tough choices.

The recent announcement that the Margaret E. Heggan library in Washington Township will cut hours and charge a new DVD rental fee in 2013 is just the latest news in the increasingly bleak financial outlook for municipal, county and association libraries throughout South Jersey.

Executive Director of the New Jersey Library Association Pat Tumulty said libraries’ financial hardships are directly connected to statewide economic declines.

“We are tied very, very directly into property tax values, and we all know property values have decreased in the past three years,” Tumulty said. “It’s certainly had an impact on municipal libraries.”

A cumulative effect

It’s municipal libraries that are hit hardest by decreases in local tax bases, since the majority of their funding comes from property tax revenue via the “1/3 of a mil” formula.

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Dating back to 1884, the formula equals out to 33 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, Tumulty explained. That means a home assessed at $100,000 pays $33 a year if they have a municipal library.

“The formula is what’s driving the reductions,” Tumulty said, adding that it’s also based on equalized valuation over three years. “It takes an average so you don’t have these tremendous spikes.”

Still, declines in ratables and lower home values have been so significant in some municipalities that they still took major blows.

“This year was a big hit because it kind of caught up to property values years before. It’s a cumulative effect,” she said.

While the formula doesn’t technically apply to county libraries, which are generally funded by a direct tax rate, it establishes a base standard that counties use to level the playing field.

“Most [counties] stay pretty much around 1/3 of a mil, because there is some sense in counties with county libraries that they don’t want to see too much of a variance between county and municipal libraries,” Tumulty said. “They don’t try to go crazy, they’re very cautious.”

She also said that too many officials treat the 1/3 of a mil formula as the only amount a municipality can contribute, when really they need to go above and beyond to support libraries.

‘Friends’ are advocates

As with schools, local municipalities and other public entities, cuts in state aid has also taken a toll on libraries. Tumulty said former Gov. Jon Corzine made multiple million-dollar cuts, but when Gov. Chris Christie took office, state aid to libraries was slashed significantly.

“Christie came in and cut direct funding to libraries in half,” she said.

That, combined with the decrease in property taxes, has hurt small municipal libraries like Bridgeton’s particularly bad.

“It’s sort of a double whammy,” Tumulty said.

Bridgeton Free Public Library Director Gail Robinson said the severe lack of ratables in the city — which houses numerous government buildings that are off the tax rolls — has left the library with an incredibly small budget to work with.

“The funding from the city diminished by 30 percent two years ago,” Robinson said. They then relied on bequest funds left to the library in wills of private citizens to keep the doors open, but they’re quickly running out.

“By the end of the next fiscal year, the library would either have to get additional funds from the community or probably close,” Robinson said. “If it hadn’t been for the bequest funds, it would’ve happened sooner.”

She said that their Friends of the Library and the “Save the Library!” organizations have also played a crucial role in allowing them to stay open.

“They make the difference in a couple of ways,” Robinson said. “In the financial support they provide, and they’re advocates. They’re moral support for the staff. They’re proof the community really finds the library important and is willing to work to provide financial assistance.”

And the importance of a free library that provides tens of thousands of residents access to job-hunting resources, educational material, internet access and countless other services, can’t be stressed enough, she said.

“There are many, many people in the community for whom we are their only access to the internet. That goes for homes that have children in school, that goes for homes of people that are unemployed and need to be looking for jobs.”

She said they’ve done what they can to minimize the impact to the public, but in the past two years, they’ve had to open an hour later and close an our earlier, charge a fee for DVD rentals, work with only four full-time staff members and fundraise as much as possible.

“It’s amazing. Sometimes even I wonder how this library has been able to stay afloat there have been so many challenges,” Robinson said, joking that the staff has kept them going since they “don’t have the good sense to not show up.

“We have a wonderful staff. They are so dedicated to their jobs and so concerned about the community.”

Taking resources away

The story in Salem County is even more bleak. While Cumberland County does have its own, albeit small, county library, Salem has none. Tumulty said that only one city, Salem City, has even voted to adopt the 1/3 of a mil law, with other independent “association” libraries relying entirely on donations, fees, aid, grants and voluntary community assistance to operate.

“Salem is the worst library county in the state, by far,” Tumulty said.

After being hit by severe flood damage from hurricanes Irene and Sandy — as well as embezzlement of hundreds of thousands of dollars from a former president — the Penns Grove library was forced to close permanently.

“A town like Penns Grove doesn’t have as many cultural offerings. By closing, you take significant resources away from the public. It’s just a terrible thing they can’t open again,” Tumulty said.

The libraries that are able to stay open, are “a bigger miracle than Bridgeton is,” Robinson said.

“I don’t know how they manage to stay open. It’s their friends group that keeps them afloat. They have just had unbelievable challenges.”

Robinson said that even though it has the added security of the 1/3 of a mil formula, their equalized valuations don’t provide nearly enough money.

“Funding to the city library is pretty sparse,” Robinson said.

‘Strive to keep going’

Margaret E. Heggan Library Opening 19 Gallery: Margaret E. Heggan Library Opening

While they’ve had to cut hours and make internal reductions, the Gloucester County Library System has fared better than its southern neighbors.

“We were doing really well with the construction boom years ago, but once that slowed down that meant our income wasn’t growing either. Fortunately for us, it’s not as drastic as what happens to some smaller libraries,” said Nancy Polhamus, public information representative and reference librarian at the Mullica Hill branch.

She said they’re certainly buying less items than they used to, but they haven’t had to resort to charging extra fees for DVD or CD rentals.

Washington Township’s recent announcement that it would have to bring in DVD fees was due to a budget reduction of $100,000 for 2013. That’s only $75,000 less than the entire amount Bridgeton draws from municipal taxes.

The fact that poorer towns have such financially-strapped libraries only furthers the vicious poverty cycle, Robinson said. Libraries serve as a community center that, at its core, supports those in need, whether its in need of a job, internet access, educational programs or just a book.

Nothing made that clearer to Tumulty than in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

“As soon as libraries could get open they did. Many people didn’t have electricity, and they knew to come to the library,” Tumulty said, noting that thousands of people filled local libraries to charge phones, file insurance claims and gather more information.

“One library did something like 160 FEMA applications in one afternoon. People came, they didn’t know what to do. They were panicking and the library sat down and helped them. That’s the sense of community that we have. We have all of these issues swirling around libraries, and it’s really the best thing in the community,” Tumulty said. “You just have to strive to keep them going.”

Contact Michelle Caffrey at mcaffrey@southjerseymedia.com