Bath library millage renewed, employees ‘excited and relieved’

Election Day usually brings about lots of changes to communities across the country. It can be anywhere from a mayor up for reelection to a school bond requesting approval. But for Bath Charter Township, population around 13,000, there was only one question on Tuesday’s ballot. 

With 75.2% of the 1,571 voters in favor, the Bath Township Public Library millage was renewed for 10 years. An extension of the previous millage, Bath citizens will continue to pay the .6792 mill rate, which was set to expire this year. 

For members of the community and library employees, passage brought a sigh of relief. Library-goers get to keep an important institution in their community. And employees have job security, knowing the library will be getting the necessary funds the next decade. 

“I was pretty confident that it would pass because it passed really fairly easily the first time,” said Bath Youth Librarian and Youth Programing Coordinator Jana Slisher. “There’s a lot of the community that worked really hard to have a library. So, I kind of felt that those people would not just let it go away so quickly.”

That does not mean lots of work did not go into getting the millage approved. Bath Township Library Director Kristie Reynolds spearheaded the millage, while legally she could not campaign for or against the millage while on the job. She said the experience was eye-opening, and now after the fact it is relieving and exciting. 

“I have been through on the sidelines of other millages, but this is the first one that I was the library director of,” Reynolds said. “Learning that intricate inside workings of how that millage worked and how to go about it and presenting to people was really exciting.” 

Reynolds has worked in libraries previously, most recently in Portland, Michigan, and came to Bath in the summer of 2018 to help lead the new community library, which had not existed before. Two years later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and like almost every business, libraries were forced to shut down. 

However, the shutdown was a blessing in disguise for the library. Originally, the staff had planned to move to their new building in 2020, an upgrade nearly three times the size of the previous location. They were still able to do so, but with the library forced to close, they were able to move easily and efficiently, instead of balancing day-to-day activities of the library with moving. 

That is when Slisher came aboard. The two had worked together in Portland, and after a few job offers, Reynolds finally convinced Slisher to rejoin her in Bath. 

With the millage accomplished, Reynolds, Slisher, and the rest of the staff can focus on other tasks such as making the library succeed. It is a continued challenge for libraries across the country, which have been forced to adapt as technology advances. Part of that effort comes with getting people back into the library and participating in events as they had before COVID. 

“There’s a lot of attacks on libraries right now,” Reynolds said. “People are not realizing how important they are. And so I’ve spent the last three and a half years here, working to show the Bath community how important this library is and what we can do for them.”

Slisher said she was in Nevada last week for the American Rural and Small Libraries Conference, where they discussed some of the challenges libraries face today. Free internet has become a selling point for libraries. “That’s a huge infrastructure thing that there isn’t good access in a lot of rural areas to technology and libraries provide that,” Slisher said. “I think it’s even more obvious now during the pandemic …”

For now, the Bath Township Public Library got the step it needed to continue serving the community. 

“Awesome! You guys are worth every cent!” one Bath citizen wrote on Facebook when responding to the library’s announcement of the millage passing.