A radio report that Todd County's public libraries may see reduced hours and staff reductions prompted Commissioner Jerry Ruda to add a discussion of the Great River Regional Library to the agenda of the June 30 Todd County Board meeting.

Ruda, who represents Todd County on the Great River Regional Library Board of Directors, said he was surprised to hear the report. He said that the decision to reduce hours of service has not been finalized but that it was probable that the Long Prairie, Staples and Eagle Bend libraries would each have their hours of service reduced by five hour per week. The Grey Eagle library will not likely see reductions in hours, he said.

Ruda explained that hours will likely be reduced in many of the library's 32 branches. He said that the Great River Regional Library board had asked library Director Kirsty Smith to prepare a 2010 budget with no increases over the 2009 budget.

Ruda said that layoffs of four management people at the library's headquarters in St. Cloud were also the result of the no-growth budget for 2010. However, a letter from Kirsty Smith to city administrators in towns that have libraries said that the four management positions were being eliminated as a result of a six month study on how to improve library operations and customer service. The study, according to library officials, cost $12,500. The recommendations of the study were incorporated into a reorganization plan was presented to the library board of directors at their meeting in St. Cloud, on June 9.

No decision was made on the reorganization plan at the June meeting. It will be reconsidered at the library board's July 14 meeting.

Following the layoffs at library headquarters, the plan calls for a number of management positions to be eliminated at the library's 32 branch libraries, including the four libraries in Todd County.

Each Todd County library currently has a part time manager, who also work as a regular librarian. The reorganization plan calls for the creation of library clusters. The plan proposes having one full time manager for a cluster of libraries. A cluster will consist of two to four libraries.

Current head librarians will be allowed to compete for the cluster management positions, be laid off, or become assistant librarians.

Library officials said that it is not currently clear how Todd County libraries would be clustered. Kirsty Smith did not respond to a request to comment on the plan. Details of the plan were made available to city administrators, and friends of the library groups, at the insistence of library staff.

Feedlots

Todd County Soil and Water Conservation District may soon contract with Todd County to administer the county feedlot program. At present the feedlot program is managed by the planning and zoning, or the ELRM, department.

Since the ELRM department has been short of staff the feedlot work has not been getting done. If the work doesn't get done, the county risks losing a $77,000 grant from the state.

"Our board has thought of taking this on before," Leland Bucholz, a director for the Soil and Water District said. "We didn't want to because we didn't want to get into enforcement. That isn't our job."

The Soil and Water Conservation District is responsible for helping farmers find solutions to their manure handling problems. They help design manure, handling systems and provide state and federal cost sharing funds to build them. Being involved in enforcement of feedlot regulations might jeopardize the agency's good relations with farmers, Bucholz and District Administrator Sandy Rohr, said.

The arrangement being proposed by the Soil and Water Conservation District and County Administrator Nathan Burkett, is to have the conservation district do everything except enforcement. When enforcement action is needed ELRM staff will do it.

The commissioners were favorable to the proposal and urged County Administrator Burkett to work with the Soil and Water Conservation District to proceed with a plan of action.