St. Mary’s County Library Brief

Originally Published: February 13, 2023

During their meeting on 2/7/23, the Commissioners received a brief from Michael Blackwell, Director of St. Mary's County Library (SMCL). The presentation included facts about library usage:

54,000 people have used their library card in the past 3 years

24% (28,000 ppl) of the county population have actively used the library in the last 6 months

Meeting room use is up 55% over last year

Programs and attendance are up 153% over last year

He also included information about return on investment (ROI):

Each county resident spends $36.77 on the library annually (through taxes)

Each resident gets back $139.13 on that investment (almost 4x ROI)

Further, he included comparisons of St. Mary’s County Library to neighboring Charles and Calvert Counties:

Budget - $4.341M (St. Mary’s), $7.1M (Charles), $6.6M (Calvert)

Circulation - 445,756 (St. Mary’s), 284.428 (Charles), 400,138 (Calvert)

SMCL is looking for additional funding from the Commissioners to expand services to meet community demand. Additionally, they are looking for funding to bring their employees up to pay parity with neighboring counties. Some positions with SMCL pay as much as $20,000 less than neighboring counties, as one county resident pointed out at the recent Commissioner’s Public Forum.

SMCL employees are not considered County or State employees. Their benefits package is tied to the County’s which helps the County’s bargaining power for cheaper health insurance rates. When county employees receive pay increases, those adjustments are not automatically given to the SMCL employees.

The library system is funded by the State and the County, but as Director Blackwell noted during his presentation State funding is given based on the wealth of a county. Because overall wealth in our county continues to rise, less and less State funding has been given over the years.

Photos included in this post show the disparity between library employees and county employees, pay scale gaps between the tri-county library systems, and the percentage of the overall county budget dedicated to SMCL over the past 8 fiscal years.

As the county’s budget process continues to play out, it is becoming painfully obvious that the Commissioners will not be able to meet the needs of everyone this year. That’s why it is more important than ever to advocate for where you want YOUR TAX DOLLARS to go. Send an email to csmc@stmaryscountymd.gov to let the Commissioners know how you feel.