NORTH Arm Cove's Library Service Point may be handed back to the community if a proposed move to the North Arm Cove Community Centre is not agreed to by the appropriate stakeholders.
The move, part of a cost cutting strategy, would result in an immediate saving of $4000 on termination of the current lease.
The proposal follows a review of all library services in the Great Lakes, which raised concerns relating to the cost of providing the service and the declining use of the facility. It also found that many North Arm Cove residents tended to use the library service at Tea Gardens.
The review found that while the North Arm Cove service costs $14,214 a year to provide, which is the lowest of the six library services in the Great Lakes, it has the highest cost per loan - $7.50 - of all six library services.
The library service at Nabiac costs $14,737, at Bulahdelah it is $14,611, at Stroud it is $14,956, at Tea Gardens it is $105,834 and at Forster $694,490.
However, the cost per loan at these library services is much less than that at North Arm Cove. The cost per loan at Nabiac is $1.35, almost one-sixth the cost at North Arm Cove.
At the other library services it is $2.38 at Tea Gardens, $1.64 at Bulahdelah, $1.74 at Stroud and $1.93 at Forster.
The decline in use and the costs involved prompted the Library Committee to recommend that a survey be conducted in North Arm Cove followed by a community meeting designed to gain local input to the future provision of library services.
The survey resulted in 83 submissions being made while 65 people attended the meeting.
In a report to the council, the manager of Library Services Chris Jones said that the strongest message received was that North Arm Cove merited the library service, especially considering the level of council rates taken from the area.
"While this may be a widespread community view, it does not address the concerns of declining use and overall cost of the service.
"Generally, residents did not see Tea Gardens as an option for library services, even though there has been a growth in the use of this facility by locals.
"Thirty four per cent of all library loans to North Arm Cove residents in 2005 occurred at Tea Gardens," he said.
Mr Jones said that the community clearly expressed the importance of the library as a centre for social interaction and the local writing group said it used the facility as a meeting place and a source of useful information and material.
The community also claimed that the availability of the photocopying and fax services were important to them, but this claim had not been borne out by a review of statistics covering use.
Mr Jones said that while the community supported moving the library service to the community centre, the space available there was limited.
He said that in the 2005-2006 budget the Great Lakes Library Service received a cut of $40,000 to its book stock budget and a further $6,000 cut to its furniture budget and was facing a similar situation next financial year with possibly even more extensive cuts.
The last meeting of Great Lakes Council decided that the opening hours of the facility and a stock rotation system should be reviewed to reduce the current impact on the workload of library staff.
The views of community representatives and library staff about relocating the service to the Community Centre would be obtained and if these did not support the move the council should progress to handing the facility over to the community.
It also decided that any costs saved as a result of the proposed relocation should remain within the Library's operational budget to support the provision of library services to the Great Lakes community.
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