24 May 2024
CLARA CITY — Clara City, a town of about 1,372 in central Minnesota, has had a library since 1937. The current one has a problem with mold and a leaky roof. City officials learned last week that they would not receive state funds to build a new library.
“I think we had people on both sides of the aisle that were certainly willing to do it, but the politics of it get in the way in the end and they always do,” said Steven Jones, city administrator for Clara City.
Libraries in small towns serve as a community center of sorts, Jones said, and while Clara City is small, its library has always been busy.
“If you’d asked me 15 years ago if libraries would still be popular and important, I would have been one of the ones to say ‘No,’ but the fact of the matter is, they certainly do different things,” Jones said.
Libraries now often provide internet and other technology services for communities, something that can be lacking outside of major metro areas.
Currently, the library also holds children’s programs, weekly summer story times and free bus tours. Perhaps because of those benefits, a community-wide survey showed that residents want to pursue a space that would improve the library.
Clara City is one of the hundreds of cities in Minnesota that will not receive funds this year to help with local projects, ranging from bridge repairs to efforts to improve drinking water, because the Minnesota Legislature failed to pass a bonding bill this session.
The last week of the legislative session was marked by disruption following an attempted Republican filibuster that led Democrats to break with tradition and cut off debate for several bills to put them up for a vote. A $900 million omnibus bill that would have provided much-needed funds to local communities failed to make it to either legislative floor.
The Legislature operates on a two-year cycle, with even-numbered years usually being the years that legislators approve funds for infrastructure projects around the state.
While the DFL also attempted to pass a $71 million package that would have provided some money to local communities, lawmakers failed to secure a vote before the Sunday, May 19, midnight deadline.
While this year failed to produce legislation to fund city projects, even if passed Minnesota’s cities still would face a shortfall in funds, said Craig Johnson, spokesperson for the League of Minnesota Cities.
“We’re billions of dollars behind on roads and billions of dollars behind on water and sewer from where we know there are needs,” he said. “This just puts us further behind.”
For example, the Minnesota Department of Health’s drinking water priority list details 846 projects in Minnesota cities with costs totaling more than $2.3 billion. Even if a bonding bill had been passed this year, there would still be over $2 billion in unfunded projects in the category of clean drinking water.
At the top of the list is a $2.1 million project for the city of Ellsworth, a southwest Minnesota town of about 500 people. At the bottom of the list is a $4.5 million project to replace a cast-iron water main in Minnetonka Beach, a western suburb of the Twin Cities with a population also around 500.
“All of these state agency programs that would normally be able to get money out for projects are unfunded,” Johnson said, and that can negatively impact growth in Minnesota’s communities.
There’s also a list of earmarks for projects, like the one in Clara City, that often are included in the state’s bonding bills.
“None of them will be funded either,” Johnson said. “At the very least, roughly a half billion or more dollars of local projects are not going to move forward.”
While it is not normal for a bonding bill to fail during these funding years, it has happened before and legislators usually come back the next year to pass bills to make up the missed year, according to Johnson.
“But it throws everything out of cycle and it means you went for one entire year where the projects had no funding available,” Johnson said.
With waiting comes a higher cost, too, Johnson said, adding that any repairs needed may become more significant and that construction costs continue to soar.
Johnson estimated that project costs can increase between 10-20% with a year delay, and meanwhile another year means more projects are coming forward that are competing for state funding.
Johnson recommends that city officials contact legislators to hold them accountable for this year’s lack of a bonding bill, saying that the Legislature is the only entity that can make it happen.
“Those are the folks that need to be reminded that it’s not just a game, this is real stuff,” Johnson said. “Our cities can’t have new businesses in them if we don’t have the capacity in our sewer system.”
For communities like Clara City, the lack of funding this year means another year of advocating to politicians to help fund city projects. With the added costs of inflation, that might be harder to sell to politicians.
“We’ve had a library for many years and we serve not just our community, we serve the community around us, too,” Jones said. “We’re not going to stop, we’ll keep trying. I think we know this is a marathon, not a sprint.”
Clara City’s library project has an estimated total cost between $3.1 million and $4.1 million. About $400,000 has been pledged for a newly donated building site. The costs would include not only the construction, but equipping the new building and demolishing the old one.
The need for a new library is great, the city recently had to shut down the building basement due to mold. The roof is leaking, windows need to be replaced and electrical and HVAC systems are failing.
The city’s engineer estimates it would cost about $1.2 million to repair the current building or bring it up to code. There’s also a concern that a remodel of the building, an old bank, would uncover additional damage.
Residents of smaller cities usually face higher taxes. Roads still need to be fixed and there are fewer people to spread the cost around, Jones said, though he does not blame legislators for not listening.
“They spent an incredible amount of time coming out here to talk to us and they’ve got hundreds of projects to look at,” he said. “I think it’s tough to have everybody go through all of that and not be able to get it over the finish line.”
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