ALBANY – The State Comptroller’s Office has examined the Western Sullivan Public Library, which consists of three library buildings with the main one in Jeffersonville and the others in Callicoon and Narrowsburg.
Auditors said to manage costs, library officials should “plan the various services and programs offered, continually monitor the aggregate progress of those services and programs and make changes, as necessary, to ensure they are provided to patrons in the most cost-effective manner.”
The state officials said while library officials “have attempted to lower costs and increase interest in the library, their costs remain high while their patrons and circulation remain low.”
A cost analysis of the library was performed in comparison to 119 other libraries and it was determined the West Sullivan Library would need to reduce costs by some $180,000 to be in line with the average of the total costs per patron in the others.
Library officials said the state auditors are not comparing “apples-to-apples” when comparing their system to the others.
Their library system serves the most rural section of the sparsely populated county with roughly 10,500 households spread out over more than 245 square miles, officials wrote. They asked if any of the other library systems cited for comparison sake reflect multi-branch systems or serve such a wide amount of territory.
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