MARSHALL — It’s still early in the 2027 budget process for local governments. However, Marshall Mayor Bob Byrnes said already there have been some concerns raised about how to fund the Marshall-Lyon County Library.

In a report to the Marshall City Council on Tuesday, Marshall Mayor Bob Byrnes talked about “serious discussions” on possible budget concerns raised at the Marshall-Lyon County Library Board’s meeting earlier this week. MLCL receives funding from both the county and the city, and there are representatives of the County Board and the Marshall City Council on the library board.

Lyon County anticipated seeing future budget challenges that could impact library funding, Byrnes said. He said the challenges could also possibly impact a long-standing agreement between the county and the city, where Lyon County contributes one-third of the library’s operating costs, and Marshall contributes two-thirds.

Marshall City Administrator Sharon Hanson said she had a brief discussion with MLCL Director Michele Leininger and Lyon County Administrator Loren Stomberg about library funding.

“We might gather this week sometime to talk a little bit longer,” she said. “I understand the county’s perspective about funding, and they’ve certainly had challenges,” Hanson said.

Minnesota state law sets an amount that counties and cities are supposed to contribute for minimum maintenance of effort for public libraries, Byrnes said. Lyon County and Marshall are both “well above” the minimum maintenance of effort, he said. However, Hanson said the state’s minimum maintenance of effort levels have been frozen at the same amount since 2011, and then were later reduced by 10%.

Byrnes said MLCL staff did an analysis, that showed that if the library’s budget were reduced to the minimum maintenance amount, it would mean laying off all the part-time staff. “That would impact hours, that would impact Balaton and Cottonwood,” he said. “It would be a dramatic change there.”

Both Hanson and Byrnes said they would have to see how future budget planning discussions went.

“This is early in the budget process, and we have a lot of work to do,” Byrnes said.

At the same time, Byrnes said, “There’s a lot of good things going on at the library . . .They have a number of basic library services that are funded by their general budget, and then they also have other things that are funded by gifts from the Friends of the Library, as well as donations.” Those additional services included things like lending libraries of tools and games, he said.