The city of Eugene’s budget no longer funds the Eugene Public Library’s books and materials, and the library’s supporters say they fear that “City Council may again make further debilitating cuts to the library budget.” 

From 2023 to 2025, the Eugene Public Library faced severe budget cuts to address the $25 million gap in the city’s budget. The public information officer for Library, Recreation and Cultural Services, Ian Campbell, says in an email that these cuts reduced funding by $670,000 and $334,000 annually, leaving the library understaffed and unable to fill the shelves with the materials it needs to run. 

Before the budget cuts, the Eugene Public Library was nationally recognized by the Library Journal as being in the top 3 percent of libraries in the country offering cost-effective delivery of services. Eugene Public Library Foundation Executive Director Dana Fleming says that in the last two years, reductions have caused material shortages and staffing changes that make its reputation harder to maintain.

According to a press release from EPLF, “Library staff have worked tirelessly for two years in hopes to shield patrons from the full brunt of the city’s cuts to its services.”

EPLF manages donations to help the library build the support it needs to continue successfully operating. EPLF says the budget cuts mean the library is not able to get books, as well as “electronic check-outs, magazines, DVDs, CDs, subscription services and items for the Library of Things.”

“We hope that the city finds a way to guarantee that our library is able to respond to the hundreds of different needs of the visitors who walk through the library doors every day,” says Linda Ague, president of Friends of Eugene Public Library, in the press release.

Fleming says, “We are the experts on generating support for the library. The City Council and those officials who figure out the budget, we think [they] should be the experts on balancing the city budget. We are so thankful that they are not us, and we have a lot of hope that they will identify some funding sources that will stabilize the budget so that we don’t continue to get cut.”

According to the press release, EPLF works in tandem with FEPL, the nonprofit organization dedicated to sustaining the Eugene Public Library’s success in the long term by encouraging people to donate and get involved. FEPL runs the Second Hand Prose Books store at the downtown library.

Together, the two organizations have raised $310,000 this year.

According to Campbell, in 2023, when the cuts were made, the city’s Budget Committee added the Community Safety Payroll Tax Fund to attempt to mitigate the impact of the budget cuts with a one-time contribution of $100,000. In addition, back in 2020, Eugene voters passed the Library Levy to increase property taxes and provide a new funding stream for the public library. Still, these funds weren’t enough to allow the library to flourish long-term. 

“If it were not for the library’s two biggest cheerleading quads — our foundation and Friends of the Library, and the levy, which expires next year — there would be no money available to help with the very reason the library is here; to access materials,” Fleming says. 

With the city’s 2024 expenditures exceeding its revenue, supporters of the Eugene Public Library say they fear the City Council will make increased reductions to the library’s budget. 

Fleming says, “Our lane is that we want support returned to the library, and we appreciate efforts they make to raise revenue elsewhere, but beyond that, we’re not experts on that. We’re experts on saying, ‘Hey, don’t don’t forget about this amazing cornerstone in our community, and don’t undervalue it.’”