Future Arlington Public Library budgets may face tough questions about which is more important: additional staffing or additional materials.
For the fiscal year beginning in July, both are facing the budget scalpel.
County Manager Mark Schwartz’s proposed FY 2026 budget seeks $18.9 million for library services. That’s down 2.2% from the adopted FY 2025 budget.
Staffing will decline slightly to about 140 full-time-equivalent positions under the proposal.
The staffing component is among longtime library director Diane Kresh’s top concerns — especially when it comes to temporary workers who fill in gaps throughout the eight-branch system that is open a collective 409 hours per week.
“We just do not have enough staff,” Kresh said Tuesday (March 25) at a County Board budget work session.
In many cases, “there are not enough people to do much beyond trying to keep the doors open,” she said.
Despite efforts in recent years to convert temporary staff slots to permanent positions, “we still rely very heavily on temporary staff,” Kresh said. “That is a continuing concern.”
However, devoting more funding for staff could mean less money to augment library collections.
Schwartz’s budget proposal includes $1.91 million for new materials, both print and electronic. That’s down from $2.45 million in the current fiscal year and the lowest level since FY 2022.
The proposed decline in new-materials funding has led library officials to forecast a downturn in overall circulation. What is projected to be an all-time high of 3.9 million checkouts this fiscal year could fall to 3 million in FY 2026.
“Circulation rises and falls with how much we have in our budget for collections,” said Kresh, who had home-field advantage at the work session — it was held at the library’s large meeting room owing to emergency repairs being completed at the Ellen M. Bozman Government Center.
The number of print materials to be acquired for the coming fiscal year is expected to remain steady at 53,000, but the number of e-items could drop from 35,000 to 11,500 under the budget scenario laid out.
Obtaining licenses for electronic materials has become increasingly expensive in recent years, both county staff and elected officials acknowledged.
“It’s really a steep hill to try to keep up with funding collections,” Board Chair Takis Karantonis said.
Supporters of the library system turned out for Tuesday night’s budget public hearing, held in the same room at Central Library that a few hours before had hosted the work session.
“Arlington must invest in keeping its community institutions strong and thriving,” said Friends of the Library president Claire Christian.
Noting that the library system had an impact on residents far beyond its 1% of the overall county budget, Christian was among those asking Board members to keep the FY 2026 budget at the 2025 level rather than make cuts.
So, too, was Friends board member Jamie Krovontka, who urged the County Board to fund the library system “in line with its value to the community.”
Arlington’s libraries were shut down for the first part of the pandemic and lost thousands of active users as a result, but have rebounded since. The 84,000 current active patrons represents an increase of 10,000 since FY 2023, library officials said.
The library system also benefits from about 200 volunteers augmenting staff resources, while Friends of the Arlington Public Library annually contributes nearly $400,000 to support programming, Kresh said.
