Wisconsin Officials Float New Standards
Past Federated Libraries
Some four months after Waukesha County (Wis.) Executive Dan Finley vetoed the county board’s approval of performance standards for the Waukesha County Federated Library System (WCFLS) as an “unfunded mandate,” officials there have begun pitching an alternate method for linking performance standards to each member library’s funding level. Approved October 10, the new plan hinges on imposing a county library tax on residents in underperforming service areas in addition to funding their municipal facility.
The revised plan stipulates that “you don’t have to meet standards,” WCFLS Director Thomas J. Hennen Jr. told American Libraries, so long as municipalities “keep patrons home,” or at least manage not to tap other federation libraries’ resources beyond a complicated formula dubbed the Library Service Effort Ratio.
The next step, Hennen said, “is to get all 16 library boards to say yes by December 31,” even though state law only requires half the affected library boards that represent 80% of the service population to assent.
Posted October 16, 2000.
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