Crow Wing County Residents Seeking Increased Library Funding

Crow Wing County residents are seeking more funding for the Kitchigami Region Library System.

The public showed up at the last county board meeting of 2024 in an effort to make some late adjustments to the 2025 budget, but the board declined to provide addition funding this year. Crow Wing County funds the Kitchigami Regional Library System $509,127 and has kept that amount the same since 2014.

“It really is just a question for me of, ‘What is the difference?'” asked Kitchigami Regional Library System Director Melissa Whatley. “Why would it be okay for this part of the county services to its residents to grow at this rate, while another aspect of the county services to its residents are not growing at that same rate? It really is a question of, ‘why the difference?'”

Kitchigami requested a 5.9% increase in funding for 2025, stating that nearly half of Crow Wing County’s population are registered library users.

“The library should be a reflection of the community that it serves,” Whatley said. “I don’t have books here because I think they’re the important books. I have books here because the community thinks they’re the important books, and they’ve shown us so through their usage statistics, through their requests of what materials they want to see added to the library. So, we really do reassess ourselves every single year.”

For the Brainerd Public Library, everything revolves around Kitchigami’s mission and values, which are to establish public trust and provide access, diversity and inclusion, excellence, and innovation.

“Just being able to provide the technology that is needed as well is really important,” Brainerd Public Library Branch Manager Laurel Hall said. “People are needing to access things that they aren’t able to access from home necessarily, and just having a place where people can gather. Our meeting rooms are used a ton, being able to have meeting room space and the staff to be able to do that is really important.”

Kitchigami and its branch locations advocate for upping funds to give more access and information to their patrons and to serve the community to the best of their capabilities.

“Definitely had tears brought to my eyes a few times by some of the comments from people, especially the young folks that talked about how important the library and books were to them,” Hall added. “It’s really vital to provide those services, be a space to have the friendly faces that greet you when you walk in. We just really value being that place.”

Kitchigami Regional Library System will be supplementing the Brainerd Public Library’s funding from its reserves to make do for the time being. The library system plans on having monthly budgetary checks in meetings with Crow Wing County in the hopes of finding a new resolution for the 2026 budget.