Funding cuts are occurring at all levels of government, and Pennington County is no exception. One of the primary targets being the Rapid City Library, whose budget is slashed to one-sixth of its current rate.
South Dakota’s second-largest local library serves a population area well beyond Rapid City limits, yet it wasn’t spared from the most recent round of municipal government cuts.
The budget adjustment from just under $500,000 to about $80,000 came from the Pennington County Board of Commissioners and will primarily impact households outside of Rapid City limits.
Library board member Beth Brechus spoke to the commission. While acknowledging the cut does save money for some taxpayers, she said it’s not worth the impact on the library.
“We have summer reading programs for kids, we have Custer State Park passes that people wouldn’t be able to afford that they can check out, the Libby app for all of the online books you could want to read," Brechus said. "There’s great programs for people of all ages. Those cuts impact all of us, so what’s proposed will be very real.”
This vote came after internal deliberation from the commission, and negotiations continued regarding the library’s fate. Some struggled with the implications of that vote.
Commissioner Ron Rossknecht said it’s been a reckoning for him.
"If I had to do the vote again I’d probably do something different," Rossnecht said. "I really didn’t sleep very good after reading the letters and the comments and really getting to understand. I’ve never been on the library board, but I’ve really been reading and taking to heart the letters that I got. I think that was a relatively big shock.”
Emily Tupa is chair of the Board of the Rapid City Library. In a widely circulated social media post, she says these cuts could impact staffing and hours of the library and bookmobile.
It could also mean the elimination of the library seed bank, passes to the Journey Museum, the Dial-A-Story service, and subscriptions to journalistic outlets, among other cuts.
