I know a lot of readers have been waiting for an update on what's going on with the $200 user fee for residents of the Mahomet and Tolono (Savoy) library districts. When it first approved of the fee last year [3], the board said it would review the policy after six months.
That six months expired in May, when the board took up the issue [4] and heard from opposed library users (or maybe I should call them library non-users -- not since the fee was imposed, anyway).
On that night, they failed to make a decision either way, and the issue was tabled. The board met again in June, but the nonresident fee was not on the agenda. They are scheduled to meet this Thursday, but again, it does not appear the fee will come up.
I just got off the phone with assistant library director Mary Bissey, who gave me an update today on where it stands. The update is that there's nothing new to report. "Things are status quo as far as the reciprocal borrowing is concerned," she said.
"We know that we have to get back to it," she acknowledged, but it's still unclear when that might be. It won't be Thursday (Bissey said Thursday's agenda is too long and filled with other substantive items, like a deal with the Urbana Free Library to purchase and share an automation system). And there's no way of telling yet if it will appear on the August agenda.
Either way, I'll keep an eye on it. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. You can post below, email me [5] or send me a message on Twitter [6].
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