Photo by Deb Gau From left to right, Minneota librarian Gail Perrizo, Tracy librarian Valerie Quist, and Marshall-Lyon County Library director Michele Leininger answered questions from Lyon County Commissioners during Tuesday’s meeting of the county board.

MARSHALL — Public libraries in Lyon County continued to serve patrons in spite of COVID-19 disruptions over the past year and a half, library directors said.

However, some members of the Lyon County Board said Tuesday that a 2022 funding request from the Marshall-Lyon County Library might be too much, especially given the financial impact of the pandemic on area farms and businesses.

“We’re in a very tough budget situation,” Commissioner Charlie Sanow.

In an update to the county board, MLCL Director Michele Leininger, Tracy Librarian Valerie Quist and Minneota Librarian Gail Perrizo talked about circulation, programs and more at their libraries in the past year. Leininger also presented a draft 2022 budget for MLCL and a funding request to the county.

Lyon County provides some levy funding to each of the three library systems in the county. Because it is a joint city-county library, MLCL receives a mix of city and county funding.

Leininger said MLCL tried to keep funding request increases low for 2021, due to the pandemic. For the 2022 request, they were trying to catch up. MLCL’s 2022 budget proposal included a 3.5% cost of living adjustment in its funding requests. The request to Lyon County was for $373,620 — an increase of 11.8%, or about $38,700, over 2021.

The budget also included a funding request of $747,533 to the city of Marshall. That figure was also an increase of 11.8% from 2021.

Leininger said the library didn’t ask for any employee pay increases last year. Over the past year MLCL also made some staffing changes and personnel budget changes to help meet patrons’ needs — for example, adding a clerical position to help with the library’s drive-up window, instead of a full-time adult services outreach position.

Other notable items in the budget proposal included repairs and maintenance for the library’s heating systems, and planned replacement of some technology like public-access computer terminals.

Commissioners including Sanow and Rick Anderson said they thought MLCL should look for ways to trim the request of their funding amount. Sanow said Lyon County already contributes more than its state-set maintenance of effort payment to the library.

“It’s getting to a point where it’s getting to be a lot of money,” Sanow said. Plus, with businesses hit by COVID and the ongoing drought, “Everybody’s hurting right now,” he said.

Anderson said MLCL doesn’t need to try to catch up its budget all at once.

“I think this budget is a little out of line,” he said.

In addition to the MLCL budget discussion, Leninger, Quist and Perrizo also updated commissioners on library operations over the past year. While MLCL stayed open during the pandemic in 2020, they did take precautionary measures like closing branch locations in Cottonwood and Balaton, and limiting access to library features like the children’s section at the Marshall library.

Leininger said library visits were down 50%, mainly because of the pandemic. However, circulation was only down 20%, and MLCL delivered library materials to more than 30 individuals and families in the Balaton and Cottonwood areas. MLCL also saw increased use of its homebound services and drive-up window.

The Tracy Library did end up closing for three weeks in 2020, Quist said. However, the library also developed curbside pickup and revamped its website during that time.

“Our circulation only decreased by about 12% last year,” which was positive considering that there was also street construction outside the Tracy library at the same time, she said.

Quist said community members were returning to programs at the library, and Tracy had record numbers for its kids’ summer reading program this year.

Perrizo became Minneota librarian in June 2020. While the Minneota Library closed temporarily in March 2020, she said the size of the library building was an advantage when it reopened.

“We didn’t worry too much about having to social distance,” she said, because there was typically plenty of room for visitors to spread out.

Perrizo said Minneota has also seen a good response to the return of events like a series of summer readings, and children’s story hour.

“There was a lot of attendance” for the return of story hour, she said. Perrizo said her goal is to get more kids involved at the Minneota Library.