Westlock County wants the Town of Westlock to stop charging rent to the library, after a proposed rent increase of almost $750 a month over the next five years.
Town council received a letter from Westlock County at its Jan. 8 meeting stating the Westlock Municipal Library shouldn’t pay rent because it is a municipal service in a municipally-owned building.
“We find it unusual that a municipal-based service is paying rent in a municipal facility at all and are not aware of any other municipal-based service in the community that is charged a rental fee to occupy a municipal building,” the letter from reeve Lou Hall states. “As such, we request that the rent amount charged against the library budget by the town be removed in its entirety.”
Council was “surprised” to receive the letter said Westlock mayor Ralph Leriger, adding that there was a meeting with county administration and the past reeve early last year regarding the rent increase, but council never heard back on the topic until the letter arrived.
The terms of the five-year lease see the rent gradually increasing from $5,982 per month in January 2018 to $6,732 per month by 2022.
“The budget request for 2018 contained significant increases and most of it was based on the rent from the town,” said Diane Urkow, the county’s director of corporate services. “Council’s decision was no, let’s send a letter and talk about it,”
Property taxes, insurance coverage, electronic surveillance, parking lot usage and maintenance, snow removal, janitorial, along with water, sewer, electric, gas and garbage collection are included in the bill.
“When we renegotiate the lease we need to reflect actual costs. We’re very careful not to suggest we’re looking for market-value lease rates. Market value would infer a profit and that’s not what we’re looking for, just simple cost recovery,” said Leriger, adding the library is “not a municipal service as such” but instead its own separate entity, with its own employees.
“I don’t understand the concept of not recovering the lease. If it weren’t for the library being there we probably would have knocked that building down at some point in time. It costs money to operate and that money comes directly from taxation. If we are partners in the municipal library, we should be partners in the cost,” said Leriger.
The town has requested a meeting with the town to discuss the issue but a date has not yet been scheduled.
“It looks like we need to have some dialogue with our partners,” said Leriger
“There will definitely be dialogue,” said Urkow.
