By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
The City of Great Bend received more details in their
information-gathering phase as the city council prepares the 2023 budget.
The Great Bend Public Library was among eight outside agencies that requested
funding for the upcoming year. Per usual, the library had the largest request
at $650,000.
City council member Alan Moeder stated $650,000 is a lot of money and he wasn’t
entirely sure what the library does with the funding. (Listen below to Moeder's question and Library Director Gail Santy's response)
Library Director Gail Santy said when young professionals move into the area,
one of the first places they visit is the library.
"When most people think about a library, they just think about books," said Santy. "That's one of the least things we do. We have numbers to all the resources in town. We provide genealogy. We do newspaper lookups and programing for after school, evenings and Saturdays."
Along with books, the library offers digital books and a monthly movie night.
Santy said the biggest part of the library’s budget is payroll.
"We do pay well," said Santy. "I'm generally not higher than any other place in town, but we did not lose any employees over the last two years, which is uncommon."
The city council will consider all requests from outside agencies when
finalizing the budget this summer.