A slight boost in funding for the Okotoks Public Library this year after Okotoks Town Council approved its 2018 Budget Request on Monday, Dec. 11.

The library will receive $643,506 this year from the town, slightly up from the $602,000 granted last year.

Tessa Nettleton, Director of Library Services says a big portion of the increase will go towards accommodating Alberta's minimum wage increases.

"The main issue would be the fact that minimum wage has gone up and we do have a few people on that level of our grid for wages and benefits," she explains. "We also have had to change our grid a little bit to accommodate that bottom level of minimum wage, so everyone who's been here quite a while and has more than entry level responsibilities are also accommodated through that."

She adds many staff members are now eligible for pensions as well which also contributed to the 2018 budget request.

Other than wages and benefits, the rest of the funding will go towards programming for the community, which includes Okotoks, the M.D. of Foothills, and users from South Calgary.

The library also saw 20,000 more visitors this year than last, Nettleton says she's looking forward to meeting with council in 2018 to once again chat about expansion.

The last expansion occurred in 2005, growing the library to 15,000 square feet.

"Since then Okotoks has increased in population, as has the MD of foothills, and now we're servicing some Calgary as well. Just as an idea it really should be somewhere along the lines of 25,000 square feet, and it is 15,000 square feet. We are nine to ten thousand square feet too small for who we are actually servicing at the moment."

Membership for the library has grown this year after 1500 low cost e-resource library cards were provided to the Foothills School Division.

Nettleton adds she'd like to thank Okotoks residents for supporting the library.

"Thank you very much to Okotoks for supporting us like they do, we know that we are valuable in the community and we know that we are an anchor in the downtown and we'd like to stay that way. For us it's very important that they understand that we work as hard and as frugally as we can to make sure this library is one of the busiest, and most popular libraries in our Marigold Library System."

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