The executive director of the Jackson-Hinds Library System anticipates no cutbacks in service or staff, despite both the city of Jackson and Hinds County reducing their allocations for the 2026 fiscal year.
The Hinds County Board of Supervisors reduced the funding it provides for the library system budget by $125,395 and the Jackson City Council did the same by $37,630.
“For right now because we have reserves and we are going to be reorganizing to some degree, I’ve found some ways we can save money by consolidating things,” said Jeanne Williams, executive director of the Jackson-Hinds Library System.
“In the near term, it’s not a crisis. If this becomes a trend, it will become a crisis.”
Williams, who earlier this year made budget presentations to both the city and county and requested no funding increase from either the city or county, said she didn’t receive an explanation about the reduced funding.
“When you get down to it, I’m sure there weren’t any options,” she said about the reductions.
Robert Graham, who represents District 1 and serves as president of the Hinds County Board of Supervisors, said the county had to make drastic cuts in order to have a balanced budget, which is required by law.
The county received more requests than it could fund and had to prioritize funding, he said. Declining tax revenue in the city and county and crumbling infrastructure have impacted the amount of available funds, he said.
Williams said the library system, which has a $4 million budget, will be OK because of unspecified funds.
“What we have in savings you could call unreserved funds, but the idea is we use that for reopening the Eudora Welty Library, the Tisdale Library or the Richard Wright Library, depending upon what opens first and how we plan,” she said. “At the moment, those are unspecified funds.”
She said those funds provide “a little bit of a cushion as things reset.”
The library system has an endowment held by the Community Foundation of Mississippi that was set up with $1.5 million the city council provided from the city’s $10.3 million settlement with Zurich America Insurance Company over damages from a 2013 hailstorm. The endowment will not generate proceeds until 2027, and they are designated for long-term maintenance and repairs for the Jackson libraries.
Williams is hopeful that the city and county will be in a better financial position in the coming years and able to restore the funding that was cut. “There’s so much more we could do with a budget appropriate for the size of the system,” she said.
The library system operates 12 branches, five of which are in Jackson and one seven of which are in Hinds County (Bolton, Byram, Clinton, Edwards, Raymond, Terry and Utica). The system employs 60 people.
“Most library systems running on a $4 million budget are operating half the number of branches of what the Jackson Hinds Library System has,” said Williams, who studied similar library systems in areas like Jackson.
“Library systems with 10 to 12 branches were operating on $10 million to $12 million a year. Running 12 branches on $4 million, we’re making every dollar count. I think my people in the branches are working magic with what we have.”
The largest amount of funding for the library system comes from property taxes from the city of Jackson and Hinds County.
“For the 2025–2026-year, 48 percent of our revenue is from property tax funded through the city of Jackson and 36.6 percent is from property tax from Hinds County,” Williams said.
“Property tax is our main funding, but we get 11 percent of our budget from the state and 2 percent from a federal E-Rate grant that provides for the internet.”
With three branches closed, there’s discussion about re-opening those but that will require additional funding.
Williams estimates the costs of re-opening the Welty Library: $240,000 annually for staff, $250,000 for the collection, $15,000 for equipment and $1.5 million for furniture.
The library system announced in March 2024 that it had received a $3.7 million grant to go toward replacing the Welty Library.
‘No paperwork has been signed,” Williams said, noting that in order for the funding to be received a property must be identified.
There would be additional costs to reopen the Welty Library besides a building. “We will have books that we saved from the Eudora Welty Library, but by the time we get into a new building they will have been in storage for three to four years,” she said. “I’m not sure how much of that collection we would be able to use.
“You would want some newer items. Even with a base collection, there’s still a significant cost to updating that collection, so it is useful in a community library.”
The estimate of the costs to reopen the Tisdale Branch, which was torn down in 2023 after storm-related flooding resulted in black mold growing inside, is: $130,000 annually for staff; $150,000, opening collection; $8,000, equipment; furniture, $500,000; and the cost of the facility, which is to be determined.
Reopening the Richard Wright Library in south Jackson, which was closed in 2023 after being vandalized, is estimated to cost $190,000 annually for staff; $250,000, opening collection; $15,000, equipment; $900,000, furniture; and facility cost to be determined.
