Over 220 people tuned in for a Timberland Regional Library (TRL) Board of Trustees special meeting on Tuesday to address the library district’s budget crisis.
About 150 of those people stuck through the board’s two-hour discussion to hear public comment.
Roughly 20 people spoke, with many more submitting written comments ahead of the meeting.
“Some of them actually even brought me to tears,” Board of Trustees Member Mary Beth Harrington said of the written comments said of the written comments. “It is obvious how passionate you feel about the library and how much you love the staff, and I assure you, we feel the same.”
TRL is in the process of addressing a $3.8 million shortfall in its beginning fund balance for 2026 — which by policy must start each year at 30% of estimated revenues.
The ending balance for 2025, which becomes the starting balance for 2026, was estimated at about $5.6 million — 19% of TRL’s estimated $29 million in revenue for the year.
“We have to find a sustainable way to live within the means that we have with the property taxes that we have,” TRL Financial Advisor Paige Preston said during the Feb. 10 special meeting. “Prior years, we had enough of a surplus in order to do that, even when we spent more than our revenues came in. This year, we dropped below the threshold of that being a possibility. So now we have to have a plan to rectify that.”
TRL announced last month that it is planning a series of budget cuts this year to address the shortfall, including an unspecified number of layoffs.
Many who gave public comments on Feb. 10 urged TRL not to cut frontline library workers to balance the budget.
The library workers union has spoken out strongly against the layoffs, calling for an investigation into possible mismanagement that led to the current budget crisis.
The Board of Trustees did not take action on the budget Tuesday, but is scheduled to vote on budget amendments at its next regular meeting on Feb. 25.
The numbers
TRL has been depleting its reserves since 2020 and has consistently had more expenditures than revenue since 2023, according to budget documents.
TRL built up $13.2 million in reserves prior to 2020, a year it spent roughly $4.04 million more than it earned in revenue.
TRL recovered roughly half of that loss by taking in more than it spent in 2021 and 2022.
As of 2022, TRL’s reserves totalled roughly $11.4 million.
In 2023, however, budget documents show that TRL began consistently spending more than it earned.
Expenditures exceeded revenue by $948,056 in 2023; $1.56 million in 2024; and an estimated $3.3 million in 2025.
The 2026 budget approved by the Board of Trustees in December estimates that expenditures will exceed revenue by $3.8 million this year.
The end-of-year fund balance is expected to drop to $1.78 million.
TRL Executive Director Cheryl Heywood said Tuesday she has been aware of a pending budget crisis since she started in her role in 2013, and that TRL has been working on implementing long-term solutions over the years to address it.
“We've introduced all sorts of internal efficiencies. Over this time, we have run out of options,” Heywood said.
Gifted funds, such as donations for specific projects, and building funds cannot be used to balance the general fund — meaning that some pre-approved infrastructure improvements may still go forward despite the budget crisis, TRL administrators said.
While members of the public have called for TRL to seek a levy lid lift to address the revenue shortage, Preston said that could only bring TRL’s levy rate up to $0.50 per $1,000 of assessed value. The current rate is $0.22 per $1,000 of assessed value.
TRL last went for a levy lid lift in 2009, which failed 54.86% to 45.14%.
Heywood said that TRL administration does not believe a levy lid will pass given the current state of the economy and is unwilling to pursue putting a proposal on an upcoming ballot.
TRL is only allowed to raise property taxes by 1% per year without a ballot measure.
That increase has not been enough to keep up with rising costs, according to TRL.
In direct response to the $3.8 million shortfall, TRL said community members could see impacts in the coming months that include:
• An estimated $1.8 million reduction to the collections budget, resulting in fewer new materials purchased and longer hold times
• Fewer library programs due to reduced use of paid performers and presenters
• A reduction in free printing to $20 per month effective March 1
• Additional operational changes, including significant reductions in supplies and non-essential purchases, limits on employee travel for conferences and training, and an immediate hiring freeze
TRL has also begun planning for staffing reductions to take effect May 1.
Staffing costs make up over 60% of TRL’s budget, which makes it the most obvious place to make cuts.
“We're trying to make a plan that will not decimate our district, for one, and the staffing throughout. And we're trying to make a plan that leaves libraries accessible to the public,” TRL Services Director Andrea Heisel said Tuesday.
Voluntary layoffs are being accepted through the end of the week. Eight or nine staff members have indicated interest, according to Human Resources Administrator Kandy Seldin.
“We'll know more at the end of the week, but right now we do have a handful, and hopefully we'll get a few more, and that will have less of a hardship to some other staff that may not need to be laid off if we're able to capture savings elsewhere,” Seldin said.
TRL has a meeting with the union representing TRL employees, AFSCME Local 3758-B, on Thursday, Feb. 12, according to Heywood.
Union calls for investigation
Of grave concern to AFSCME Local 3758-B is that TRL repeatedly assured them during negotiations in the fall that the budget was stable and no layoffs were planned.
To then be presented with a budget crisis and told that it had been on TRL’s radar for years was “unacceptable,” union spokesperson Naomi Bell said Tuesday.
“The sudden turnaround and hurried plan is an indication that the library administration is not equipped to address the situation. We believe there should be an investigation into the budget process to identify how it was mismanaged, and to look into the competency of library leadership and making budget predictions,” Bell said.
In a news release published Feb. 6, the union cited TRL’s decision to give the top two administrators below the director a 15% pay increase right before the budget deficit was announced as an indicator that the budget is not being managed correctly. That pay increase was approved by the Board of Trustees on Dec. 30.
TRL’s budget documents and released FAQ sheets about the budget “do not provide clear or full context or explanation for decisions like this which were made when preparing the 2026 numbers,” the union said in the news release. “The most generous reading of this situation is that the library administration severely underestimated the scale of the budget and general fund shortfall in the numbers they provided in December. Yet that would still amount to severe financial negligence.”
Heywood said Tuesday that large salary increases, like the ones given to those two administrators, are because the employee “has taken on substantially more responsibilities in their job descriptions.”
Seldin confirmed that those two administrators’ positions were reclassified and their pay was increased as a result.
Former Mountain View Timberland Library manager Mary Prophit, who resigned in 2021 citing internal leadership issues within TRL, has echoed the union’s call for an independent investigation into TRL’s finances.
TRL administration planned to close the Mountain View Timberland Library in 2018 and forbade staff from warning the public ahead of the board’s vote, The Chronicle previously reported.
Prophit sent a letter to the Board of Trustees ahead of the Feb. 10 meeting outlining what she said are ongoing internal leadership issues within TRL.
In her letter, she said that board members “only see and hear information from the very people who are causing all the problems — staff from the branches are so battered by toxic leadership and the constant threat of disciplinary action that they cannot tell you what is really going on.”
Prophit additionally called for a vote of no-confidence in Heywood and suggested that both Heywood and Director of Operations Brenda Lane “need to be fired and replaced with more competent individuals.”
Addressing the calls for an investigation, Heywood said Tuesday that TRL has received consistently clean audits and that no individual staff members, including Heywood herself, have direct access to TRL funds.
A recent audit examining TRL’s operations from Jan. 1, 2019 to Dec. 31, 2021 did reveal multiple issues, according to reporting by The Olympian. TRL lost $120,000 that year to a scam, $65,000 of which was recovered by the FBI. The library district ended up paying a $10,000 insurance deductible.
At the time, Heywood and Lane said the most serious concerns brought up by the state Auditor’s Office — public loss of funds and questions about the competitive bid and prevailing wage process — “have already been dealt with,” according to The Olympian.
