Bessemer City Council approves library contract with Ironwood Township

BESSEMER - Bessemer's City Council approved expanding its library services to cover the residents of Ironwood Township Monday.

The Ironwood Township Board of Trustees agreed to enter into a contract with Bessemer at its meeting on Sept. 8 after terminating its agreement with the Ironwood Carnegie Library.

Township trustees noted disagreements with the Ironwood library regarding contractual services and their recommendation of a township resident to the library's board that was not accepted.

Melissa Rajala, Bessemer's library director, said about nine Ironwood Township residents have already signed up for library cards in Bessemer.

Bessemer's library is part of the same cooperative as Ironwood's and it offers "pretty much the same services," Rajala told council members. "The one request the township had was for a book-drop at the township building. I guess they had asked Ironwood for a book-drop for awhile and that's what they wanted."

Rajala said she and her staff have discussed possibly doing some programs at the township building, along with ones they currently offer at the Bessemer library.

"But I wanted to just kind of take it slow and see what the impact would be of almost doubling our customer base," she said.

With the additional customers, Bessemer's library will be considered a Class 2 public library under state law, the same as Ironwood's.

"Ironwood Township is about 2,300 residents, so we add the 2,300 to the 3,000 that we already serve with Bessemer and Bessemer Township," Rajala said.

Class 2 libraries serve populations between 4,000 and 6,999, are open at least 20 hours per week and must employ a director for at least 20 hours a week.

Rajala said Bessemer has met those requirements already as a Class 1 library.

In addition, the library's director must possess at least a level 4 certificate, which Rajala has.

Though state aid stays the same for Class 2 libraries, Rajala said, it requires a certain level of local funding.

"We've always been well above that level, and we're still above that level as a Class 2," Rajala said. "We're required to be funded at least three-tenths of a mill of the taxable value of our service area, and we're well above that."

Council member Doug Olsen said he favored the expansion so Bessemer library can collect the penal fines, if nothing else.

Penal fines, from the court system, are determined yearly and based on population and local laws, and are distributed to libraries from the county treasurer.

"It's my understanding that the penal fines, $15,000 to $16,000 for this contract, would be coming to Bessemer's library, the combined library," Olsen said. "So it would be a boon of, at least the first year, anyway, of $15,000 to $16,000 we don't have right now."