When Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm ordered the withholding of state aid payments to libraries earlier this spring, there was concern to Leelanau County.

Glen Lake Community Library, Leland Township Library, Leelanau Township Public Library and the Suttons Bay-Bingham District Library all receive of funding through the state aid system. About half of state library aid goes to the Mid-Michigan Library League, the regional cooperative of which the four libraries are members.

Library directors are quick to point out the value of the cooperative, and talked about the impact locally when it was forced to lay off employees because of a funding shortfall.

“When the cooperative was down earlier this year, we lost the inter-library loan program, and that really had an impact,” said Leelanau Township Library director Deb Stannard. “The inter-library loan program is a complex system that allows us to get books, documents, recordings, just about anything from any library in the country,” she said.

The Leelanau Township library received $1,697 in state aid for 2006-07, half of which went to the cooperative. Since funds from libraries were held back, Stannard said the co-op’s staff had to be reduced, including laying off the person who ran the inter-library loan program.

The league went from a staff of about six full-time and part-time people to one full-time and one part-time, she said.

“It was to the point where I didn’t want to call them because they were so busy and had no staff to help. It just felt like an intrusion,” said Suttons Bay-Bingham library director Virginia Roberts. The Suttons Bay-Bingham library received $3,906 in state aid, half of which eventually went to the cooperative. Roberts said not having the loan program was a blow to all county libraries.

“I have a patron who uses the library for research for his job and we used the (cooperative) program to get him items we just don’t have. That was the most noticeable thing for us,” she said.

Both Stannard and Roberts said the cooperative offers other services as well, such as seminars and workshops that keep librarians and their staff up to date with the latest research techniques and technology. Roberts said the cooperative helped when the library bought two new computers with funds from the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.

“The cooperative directed us to the grant program through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and we were able to purchase five new computers all together,” she said. When Roberts had a problem downloading software for the new computers, the cooperative had a disc she could borrow to load the programming.

“They help us in so many ways,” she said.

Stannard, Roberts, Glen Lake director David Diller and Leland director Sylvia Merz worked together to set up a regional book loan program with other libraries in the Grand Traverse region. The state has since released state aid payments, so the co-op has resumed the inter-library loan program. However, there are no guarantees that another delay won’t occur again.

“The aid payment is supposed to come in August; we’re waiting to see what happens,” Roberts said.

All four of the county’s libraries rely in some way on millages for most of the funding. Diller said the Glen Lake library receives most of its $141,000 budget funding from a 20-year, .25-mill property tax levy. The millage was approved by voters in 1996 and that millage rate has been rolled back to .19-mill for 2007.

“What’s surprising to me is that we are already over halfway through that millage cycle,” he said. The millage will generate $103,000 this year.

The Suttons Bay-Bingham library has a .3-mill property tax levied in Bingham and Suttons Bay townships. For 2007, the millage will generate $83,136, which accounts for about two-thirds of the library’s $124,154 in total revenues.

The Leland library receives most of its revenues from the township board’s general fund. In August 2006, Leland Township voters approved a levy of .47-mill for five years that will bolster the township’s operational millage rate. Part of the reason for seeking the millage was to help boost funding for the library.

Merz said the library’s 2007-08 budget is $150,050, of which $20,000 is for a renovation project of the library building. In 2006, the budget was $112,000. The library’s fiscal year runs the same as the township’s, April 1 to March 31.

The Leelanau Township Library has a budget of $98,000, which is primarily funded through the township’s general fund budget. “We have a good idea on how to keep costs down without sacrificing service,” Stannard said.