Voters will decide on Tuesday whether to fund their schools through excess levies. In Cabell County, even more is on the line.

Grace Gooding has voted for Cabell County’s excess levy funding schools, libraries and parks for decades. But she won’t be voting for it this year.

Several evenings this week, she knocked on her neighbors’ doors in Huntington. If they answer, she explains why she’s now against it. If they don’t, she leaves a door handle hanger that gets straight to the point: “Save our parks and libraries.”

As a former library volunteer, she feels a responsibility to encourage people to vote against a levy proposal. She said that people support funding for the schools, but not at the cost of the libraries and parks.

“We just want them to fix it,” she said.

Historically, along with school funding, the education excess levy has also provided funding for parks and libraries based on property tax assessments.

But following a state Supreme Court decision this year allowing Cabell schools to no longer fund the parks and libraries, school officials decided to give them less money.

The county’s libraries typically receive a percentage of tax collections, so they received larger amounts from the school system as property values increased. This year’s levy, though, would cap the library allocation at a certain amount. In the first year the levy would take effect, it would slash school system funding for the libraries by 23% over 2022, the last year before the school system started cutting library funding.

Parks would get less than half of their current funding. And schools would receive more than $4 million more each year.

There are several levies on the Cabell County ballot. The most controversial is the one that funds things like school safety, teacher benefits, building maintenance and field trips.

School levies fund education and operations. In Cabell County, more is at stake.

Across the state on Tuesday, voters in more than half of West Virginia counties will cast ballots on levies for additional school funding. These property taxes are used to fund everyday operations and facilities upgrades and must regularly be approved by a county’s voters.

Statewide, West Virginia’s counties without school levies spend among the smallest sums per student.

Those urging a vote against the Cabell County levy hope that if it fails, school officials will put it back on the ballot in November with well-funded schools, but also without cutbacks for parks and libraries.

School Superintendent Ryan Saxe said he doesn’t believe board members would agree to that because they support the levy as written. The board president and vice-president didn’t answer questions.

He said the goal of this levy, which includes about $29 million allotted for schools, is to also support parks and libraries.

“If the excess levy fails, then there is no money that goes to the parks or the libraries,” he said.

Saxe predicted that the board would vote to put the excess levy on the ballot again, but in the same form.

Cabell County levy would mean reduced hours and fewer services for libraries

As Gooding goes door-to-door on the South Side, a thunderstorm is in the forecast and she carries an umbrella and wears waterproof hiking shoes.

One of those who answered their door, Josie Dyer, said she’s voting against the levy because the libraries are essential to her. She works from home and cares for her kids. During frequent power outages, librarians have given her a private area to work in.

“They found a space for me and coordinated everything so that I had no worries,” she said.

The libraries have already developed a plan if the levy passes on Tuesday and funding is reduced, according to Cabell County Public Library Executive Director Breana Bowen. She said libraries will have to cut services if the levy passes.

As she sits for an interview in a meeting room at the main library location in Huntington, Bowen said she stays optimistic, but her face shows despondence as she gets emotional talking about the levy.

She said she wasn’t telling people how to vote. But as librarians do, she still wanted to provide factual information.

First, they’d start with a hiring freeze and reduced hours, followed by the removal of positions through attrition, then a decrease in programs like summer reading and resources like books. Finally, they would resort to closing libraries and laying off staff.

She said books are the centerpiece of the libraries. But she noted they also provide knitting clubs, toddler time, story hours, audio-books, 3-D printers, help for homeschooling parents, genealogy databases, teen internships and even in-house social workers.

Libraries provide free notary services and computer access for people who wouldn’t otherwise have it. They also bring books to homebound people.

And while libraries also receive state funding, they haven’t had an increase in more than ten years, even though they asked lawmakers, unsuccessfully, for an increase this year.

“What’s going on here is so much bigger than the agencies fighting over money,” she said. “We’re dealing with people’s lives.”

School system administrators say they’re also feeling the financial squeeze.

Keri Brown, principal of Barboursville Middle School, noted that the excess levy pays for dental and vision insurance for teachers, which the state doesn’t require schools to provide.

Schools across the state receive less state funding due to declining enrollment. But Brown was able to start the school year with every classroom covered by a certified teacher.

“I think all parties involved need to understand that our population is decreasing,” she said. “And the economy has changed and cutbacks do need to be made.”

When libraries saw their funding from the schools decrease last year, Bowen said they weren’t able to fill the positions of 5 people who left their jobs. Of about 80 employees at the eight libraries in the county, that’s about one in 16 positions gone. Annual raises to keep up with the cost of living were also put on hold.

She worries about a loss in funding for the parks too, like Huntington’s Ritter Park.

“It’s like you’re walking through a mini Central Park right here in Cabell County,” she said.

If the levy passes, parks funding would go from around $500,000 to $200,000.

Cabell County residents are proud of Ritter Park – its rose garden, trail, tennis courts and playground draw people from all over.

One sunny day this week, a mother new to town kept an eye on her two kids as they scrambled up a climbing rock. She said her family started visiting as soon as they recently moved to Huntington.

And several older people got in some exercise by walking laps.

Nancy Moss, a lifelong Huntington resident, stopped her lap to say that she is against the levy as written. She and her husband regularly walk there, and they bring their grandkids to picnic and feed the squirrels and ducks.

“We’re here all the time,” she said. “It’s just been a part of our life.”

Less library funding might be felt the most at smaller branches in the Cabell library system.

At the West Huntington Public Library, Olivia Picklesimer, branch manager, noted that it’s a low-income area and many patrons are seniors.

She said if her branch closes, her patrons who don’t have cars won’t have any library to visit.

Latchkey kids also go to the library after school or during the summer because their parents are working but still can’t pay for childcare.

Some people who are homeless visit the library during the day to get out of the heat or cold, and some people who stay in homeless shelters are required to leave during the day.

“We’re the last place that population can go where they can just go to just be, to just exist,” she said. “And if we’re gone, where are they gonna go?”

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