Geoff Helisma |

Councillor Karen Toms convinced a majority of councillors to retain $67,678 – leftover after installing solar panels on the Grafton library – for library purposes at last week’s April 17 Clarence Valley Council (CVC) meeting.

The council officer recommended transferring the money into the Strategic Building Reserve, which was only supported by councillors Arthur Lysaught and Jason Kingsley when the vote was taken. Pitching to her fellow councillors, Cr Toms’ said it was her “intent and hope … that we don’t lose that $67,000 into that Strategic Building Reserve, and that we actually keep the funds for library”. “And the reserve we have at the moment, other than the Regional Library Reserve (it wouldn’t be wise to put it in there, because we are with Bellingen library in that reserve),” she said.| “…You might recall, councillors, that in the efficiency savings that we’ve had, we almost had the Iluka library close down. “Instead, we took $60,000 from our public libraries, which was actually used to cut certain programs. “My hope and thinking is that we not let that $67,000 get swallowed up in our Strategic Building Reserve, which is where we put unwanted assets that we sell … and use for other reasons like excess depot bills or whatever else we are going to use for that Strategic Building Reserve.” As a result of Cr Toms’ proposal, $67,678 will be “transferred to RA10670 and [include changing] the Restricted Asset [RA] name to Mobile Library and Library Programs”.