If Valleyview’s town councillors had objections to what was on the library’s shelves, they never said anything publicly. There were no public notices or debates in council chambers. But in December 2023, they cut $60,000, about half the town’s portion of funding, from the library budget.
Library staff said they learned about the cut from the local rumour mill.
“There is no coming back from 50 per cent,” library director Kerri Danner can be heard saying in a video of an emergency library board meeting in December 2023 obtained by The Fifth Estate.
At the meeting was Coun. Ken Wittig, town council’s lone member on the library board. He did not provide a definitive reason for the budget cut, but suggested the town’s finances were a part of it, saying the town had not raised taxes in years.
“As a taxpayer, I would like to be approached about that though before I hear that services are being cut,” Danner said.
“Well, we’re not cutting services,” Wittig said.
“You are. Library services,” Danner said. “You’re cutting library services.”
One board member asked Wittig if the budget cut was a way to starve the library to justify moving it into a planned new Northern Gateway Public Schools complex in the town — a move the library board rejected a year earlier.
“I don’t think that’s the case whatsoever,” Wittig said.
Members of town council, including Mayor Vern Lymburner, declined to speak to The Fifth Estate. They unanimously passed a motion in November behind closed doors, shortly before The Fifth Estate’s planned arrival in Valleyview, saying no member of the elected council can speak to the media.
In a two-sentence statement uploaded to the council’s Nov. 25 minutes on the town’s website, the council said that any decisions it makes are in the best interests of the town’s ratepayers, but did not mention the library.
