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Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your boxes!
We're kicking it into high gear with donations coming in fast and furious for the Used Book Sale. As books are sorted, they need to be stored in boxes until we set up for the sale. Right now, we have a serious box shortage. If you have any boxes roughly the size of a copy paper box PLEASE drop them off at the library. The boxes can be a bit smaller than a copy paper box, but not larger because when packed full of books, they're really too heavy to safely move.
Used Book Sale Dates Set
This year's book sale will begin Monday, September 23 and run through the week during regular library hours, finishing on Saturday, September 28. Sharp-eared attendees with good memories may recall that at our June meeting, we actually had set the sale for the previous week. However, due to scheduling conflicts, we've had to move it to the last week in September.
We'll be setting up on Friday the 20th and Saturday the 21st from 9 a.m. to about noon on both days. Based on last year's experience, it will be a bit frenzied but a lot of fun. Please mark your calendars and come to help. The more volunteers who show up, the faster the work goes. And remember, volunteers for set-up get first choice of books and other items!
Follow the money
Curtis Dancer, Alma's Director of Finance, spoke at our June meeting and we all learned a lot about how the library is funded. We got the good news that the fiscal year 2025 budget looks good for the library with no significant cuts to funding. We also got our questions about the funding sources for our library answered. There are five main sources:
.5 county-wide library millage -all libraries in the county receive a portion
1 mill Alma library operating millage
Annual contribution of $100,000 from the general fund of the city of Alma
Library endowment fund. None of the principal can be used, but 80% of interest generated by the fund can be used by the library. The remaining 20% of interest goes back into the fund.
Penal fines--revenue from fines for things like speeding, parking violations, littering, violating wildlife conservation laws, violating marine safety laws, etc.
So, would it be wrong to encourage speeding, etc. to increase the amount the library receives from penal fines? Asking for a friend. 😉
Something for the grown ups
The committee on adult programming for the library (Susan Hunter, Gary Rayburn, Karol Davidson, and Jane Brown) meets this month with Morgan Most, Alma's Parks and Recreation coordinator to determine which program ideas from the list our Friends group generated are most feasible to try in 2025.
If you'd like to see all the new programs Morgan has developed at our parks, you can check out the City of Alma Parks and Recreation page on Facebook, or visit the community calendar online at https://www.gogratiot.com/alma.
We love our library staff part II
The last newsletter noted that we would be purchasing $10 gift cards from Ballyhoo Books to give to our amazing library staff on their birthdays. Thanks to a very generous but anonymous donation, we were able to bump that to $25 cards to show our appreciation.
Time to get serious about book sale organizing
After our July meeting on Thursday, July 25th, we have only one more meeting before the book sale. So, our meeting this month will focus on review of what worked last year, what didn't, and creation of a checklist to make this year's Used Book Sale an even bigger success than last year's! Please come if you can to help us get organized.
That's it for now. Remember we have changed our meeting time to 4:30 p.m. but we will continue to meet on the fourth Thursday of the month (July 25th this month) at the library. As always, hit reply to this email or call me at 989-620-0272 if you have questions, concerns, or thoughts to share. Thanks!
Susan
Susan Hunter, chair Alma Library Friends
A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. ~Andrew Carnegie