Town of Bowden to see increase in PRL requisition

Municipalities covered by the Parkland Regional Library board will be receiving a requisition of $7.07 per capita for the 2012 budget year, following some adjustments from PRL administration.

Sheila Church, a Bowden councillor who sits on the PRL executive, told fellow councillors last week during a council meeting that she argued at the executive level for a reduction from $7.17 per capita, the amount originally suggested. Bowden council ratified the requisition.

“The services they provide (to municipal libraries) are great but we need to bring this down,” she told fellow councillors.

Church said as a member of the executive, she got a sneak peek at the budget, but felt that for some municipalities — such as Bowden — the proposed per capita increase from $6.97 in 2011 would be too much for some municipalities to bear. The budget is first proposed to the executive, then the broader PRL board that includes representation from each of the 50 municipalities in central Alberta that are part of the network, then it goes to individual municipalities for ratification.

“At the executive meeting many of us felt that because all the towns are suffering, money is short, and we felt that we would like to see (the requisition) come down, so through various means the director (Ron Sheppard) took our suggestions to heart and he adjusted it and brought it down by 10 cents,” Church said in an interview.

The PRL has also provided estimates for 2013 and 2014, but Church said those are broad estimates that cover worst-case scenarios and that much work still needs to be done to firm up a per capita requisition of $7.53 in 2013 and $7.91 in 2014.

Church, who represents a group of several towns on the executive, said because the organizational meeting for the group is taking place in November, she may no longer sit on the executive.