The Crawford County Library System Board learned about avenues of generating funding for the county library system on Thursday.

The board met at the Mountainburg Public Library Thursday to discuss funding options with Rusty Myers, who worked for the Western Arkansas Planning and Development District for several years before retiring.

Jami Ann Balkman, chairwoman of the board, said part of the library system's funding situation is 1998 was the last time it asked for increased funding for daily operating expenses. A millage increase was passed in Crawford County that year.

"I don't know very many people that are functioning in their personal budget on the same amount of money that they were functioning at in 1998," Balkman said. "And so we've gone a very long time being very frugal, being very careful with public funds, but we've had inflation, ... there's now an increased minimum wage that's mandated. There's just been quite a few things that have increased in cost, and at this point, we are just barely making it."

Balkman said there is not much extra funding left when the library system needs to do things. The new library in which Thursday's meeting took place would not have been possible if the system did not have a lot of community support and a large anonymous local donor.

One of the possibilities the board discussed with Myers was a millage increase. Myers said the Crawford County Quorum Court has got to refer any increase to a vote. Furthermore, they can vote to put it on the ballot at either a special election or a primary or general election.

"It seems to me, to jump ahead to a conclusion here, and we got to be careful about doing that without further discussion sometimes, but it would seem to me that what you would be looking at is probably the quorum court, if they could be convinced to do so, placing the issue, whatever the issue is, a certain amount millage, before the voters in the primary or the general election of 2020," Myers said.