Opposition MLAs say the closure of five libraries in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley will be devastating to the communities they serve and that the Houston government should try to keep them open.
As of July 20, branches in Hantsport, Kentville, Lawrencetown, Port Williams and Middleton will shut down. The Annapolis Valley Regional Library Board said its decision ultimately came down to increasing costs and limited funding.
“When you think about the essential service that is no longer going to be provided in the Valley for the communities, for the families, there’s going to be a loss of jobs within those particular locations,” NDP MLA Suzy Hansen told reporters in Halifax on Tuesday.
“I think the government has a responsibility to keep these spaces open for community and for families, and it shouldn’t fall under their cruel cuts they put forward in this year.”
The provincial library funding formula has been static since 2020 and libraries have been asking for increases for several years, pointing to inflation and growing demand for library services.
Hansen said the province should’ve dealt with financial requests from the libraries when it had a budget surplus.
Interim Liberal Leader Iain Rankin called it a “misstep by the government through the budget process.”
“… This is a problem of their own making. The pattern of overspending in all of their budgets is resulting in a reduction in areas that weren’t the problem of these libraries,” Rankin said.
PC MLAs say library board’s decision ‘drastic’
Provincial funding for libraries comes from the Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage. The department would not make Minister Dave Ritcey available for an interview for the second day in a row.
PC MLAs with affected libraries in their areas say the branches play a big role in their communities and that the Houston government has maintained funding and provided bridge funding over the years to help with operating costs.
“It’s disappointing to hear the decision made by the board to close those locations, but we’ll continue to have conversations and work as hard as we can to find better outcomes,” Kings West MLA Chris Palmer told CBC News on Tuesday.
West Hants MLA Melissa Sheehy-Richard says the closure of the Hantsport library in her area seemed “very sudden.” She said conversations about library costs have been ongoing and the province didn’t ask the library board to make any reductions.
Sheehy-Richard said the province has maintained funding for libraries, when other organizations have had to face three per cent reductions over the years.
“We also had topped them up at the end of each season to meet their operational needs for the past three years at least, so I guess 71 per cent of their funding is already coming from the province,” Sheehy-Richard told CBC News.
“That’s a significant amount of their funding. … I’m disappointed to hear they made such a drastic decision with very little heads up.”
Closures ‘years in the making,’ board says
The CEO of the Annapolis Valley Regional Library Board told CBC News in an interview on Tuesday that the decision to close five libraries was “multiple years in the making.”
Julia Merritt said the board told the provincial government in 2023 that the funding formula “was not going to be sufficient going forward.” She said the library took steps to reduce its expenses and the province provided short-term bridge funding, but it was not made available this year.
Merritt said funding “has remained flat” for Nova Scotia public libraries since the 2019-20 year, “so there has not been any increases for inflation during that time, which has increased pressure significantly.”
She said when the decision was made not to offer bridge funding or increases for inflation for the 2026-27 year, the board was left with no other choice. On Monday, the province said there were no requests for bridge funding this fiscal year.
The preliminary deficit was $625,000 on a budget of $2.7 million and the Annapolis Valley Regional Library (AVRL) system made separate and individual requests to all eight of its funding partner municipalities and all agreed to contribute additional funds for this year, Merritt said.
With that additional funding, Merritt said the deficit was reduced to $325,000, “but unfortunately that’s just not going to be sustainable.”
Andrew Zebian, the mayor of Kentville, told CBC News his town’s library branch is the most used in the system and he doesn’t understand why it was selected to close.
“AVRL never brought me to the table to discuss anything so this decision is disappointing because I still don’t understand the rationale to close the busiest branch,” Zebian said in an email.
Merritt said the decision was made by looking at the regional system as a whole. This included geography, population distribution, service overlap and financial sustainability.
Library board open to further talks
“There are currently three library branches within a relatively small radius in that eastern Kings corridor and so the decision was taken in tandem with looking at all of those factors together,” she said.
Merritt said 23 staff members will be affected by the restructuring, but not all will be laid off. She said 9.6 full-time equivalent jobs will be impacted. She said in the last 10 years, the total staffing complement has been reduced by nearly 50 per cent.
When asked if the closures could be reversed, Merritt said the board is open to discussion.
“Depends on what the governments involved want to see in terms of levels of service in their area,” she said.
Source: CBC Nova Scotia