After one year of no longer issuing daily fines for overdue items, the Tooele City Library has seen positive returns, according to library director Jami Carter.
In a presentation to the Tooele City Council Wednesday night, Carter outlined the benefits seen by the library since going fine free, including more returned items, more reactivated library cards and more time for staff to provide personalized assistance and free programs for the community.
“If this was a story, I would spoil it by saying that year one was absolutely fantastic,” Carter said.
The city council voted to discontinue fines last December at the recommendation of Carter and the library board. Carter said there were several months of research prior to the change.
While library patrons don’t have to pay a daily late fee anymore, they are still billed for the item cost if an item isn’t returned within 14 days of the due date. If the item still isn’t returned, the case can be sent to the city attorney’s office for collections.
Even without the threat of a daily fine, Carter said item return rates are about the same as they were in the past. In a typical week, 76 percent of items are returned on or before the due date, while an additional 15 percent are returned within a week of the due date.
“The 91 percent return rate going just a week past the due date, that’s pretty spectacular,” said Tooele City Councilman Steve Pruden.
All told, 99.6 percent of borrowed items from the library were returned, paid for or replaced within 30 days of their due date, according to Carter.
With the switch to no late fines, about one percent of library patrons lost items in the previous year. The percentage remained the same as in the years past, Carter said, but the one percent with missing items had 83 percent fewer unreturned items.
“It incentivized them to return as much as they could,” Carter said.
While the library expected a 55-percent decrease in revenue without collecting overdue fines, the actual revenue only decreased by 23 percent. Library revenue generated by fines went to the general fund.
Carter said the unexpected revenue came from a 40-percent increase in payment for past unreturned items, a 411-percent increase in past attorney and collection fees, 14-percent increase in lost library card replacement and 11-percent increase in non-resident borrowing privileges.
While the item return figures and revenue were positives, Carter said removing the late fines had quality-of-life benefits for her staff.
“The emotional energy that it took, honestly, for my staff to have an altercation about a fine every single day zapped the energy in our department and it has returned with a vengeance,” she said.
The library only completed a quarter of the financial transactions in 2018 it did in 2017, the final year it collected fines, according to Carter. With the additional time, the library launched several new services, including “Book a Librarian,” where patrons can get personal assistance on a specific topic, such as resume writing.
The library also expanded the number of free tech classes it offers, including its first in Spanish, Carter said.
With expanded services and less late fee-related conflict, an anonymous staff survey had positive returns, according to Carter.
“So we feel a difference in there and that inevitably is spilling over into the folks that are coming into the library,” she said.
With the switch to a fine-free policy and other past changes, like keeping the library open six days a week, Carter expressed gratitude to the city council.
“I cannot say how much I … love what we do and how honored I am that you have extended the trust that you have to me and to my staff to deliver on what is most important to that person in front of us,” she said.