19-hour employees help library bottom line

CEDAR RAPIDS - Big-sized retailers have gained notice over the years for limiting employee hours as a way of containing what they pay in benefits.

The phenomenon of the part-time employee falling under the benefit threshold may give Cedar Rapids voters something to contemplate as they decide Nov. 3 whether to approve a property tax increase of 27 cents per $1,000 of assessed value to help the Cedar Rapids Public Library cover its operating expenses.

The library - which is comprised of the 2-year-old downtown library and the newly enlarged westside branch library - has a total of 85 employees. But of the number, 30 are full-time with benefits; 24 are part-timers working at least 20 hours with partial benefits; and the largest number, 31, work 19 hours a week, an hour short of qualifying for any benefits.

It is an arrangement that does for the library what it does for places in the private-sector: It saves money.

City human resources manager Heath Halverson said the city estimates the cost of benefits is 40 percent beyond the cost of wages for the average full-time Cedar Rapids public employee.

It is math that Dara Schmidt, the city's library director, said she knows well.

'There is no denying that using part-time employees is a cost-cutting move, and that model for the library is not going to change,” she said. 'Our budget simply does not have enough funds to pay full benefits for everybody and still have the level of service that we really need.”

This fiscal year, the library's operating budget is $6.3 million, with the cost of employees making up 75 percent or $4.78 million.

Other costs include facility operation, information technology expenses, supplies, postage and banking fees.

In this budget year, the City Council has agreed to provide the library with $667.000 in one-time emergency funds to go with the use of $250,000 in library reserve funds to balance the library budget. In addition, the council has taken on $500,000 in one-time debt to cover the annual cost of purchasing new materials and replacing damaged ones to keep its collection current.

The proposed library levy would raise $1.6 million a year from property taxes, an amount that would allow the library to replace this year's one-time extra city funding for operations and eliminate the need to take on debt to buy books and materials.

Revenue from the library levy would add to $4.5 million in tax money the city expects to continue providing the library annually.

Not paying benefits to the 31 19-hour library employees is not something that makes the jobs difficult to fill, the city's Halverson said,

On the contrary, Tina Pipkin and Brad Gardner, two of the 19-hour employees, said they are examples of how needs of a part-time employee's life have merged with the library's need to save.

Pipkin, 44, and her husband, Chris, own a business. She schools their daughters, ages 9, 11 and 13, at home while their 17-year-old son attends Xavier High School.

'The part-time job allows me to home-school my girls and to have a little extra money,” Pipkin said.

Nineteen of the library's 31 employees have the job title of customer service associate, which requires a college degree or two years of library-related work and the ability to make independent judgments on the job. Pay starts at $18.08 an hour. Another 12 of the employees are library shelvers who start at $12.09 an hour.

Pipkin, who has a master's degree in library and information sciences, said her job classification allows her to use her library training even if it is only 19 hours a week.

'Which is a big draw for me,” Pipkin said. 'I wanted to still be in the library world, and so this fits my family's lifestyle perfectly.”

She said the staff does not treat 19-hour employees as second-class citizens.

'I don't feel I'm missing out on anything,” Pipkin said. 'It's a good opportunity to help the public, to be part of something larger than ourselves. And the city has wonderful facilities. We're very blessed.”

Gardner, 41, is a part-time math instructor at Kirkwood Community College who has been a 19-hour employee at the library for less than a year. His wife, Amy, is a media specialist/librarian for Cedar Rapids Community Schools and he, she and their two teenage daughters get health benefits through her job. The lack of benefits at his job isn't a factor, he said.

Gardner said his customer service work at the library allows him to use his teaching skills even when he's not teaching at Kirkwood.

'One of the simple pleasures is you can sit down and help people,” he said, noting one recent day when he brought a young student's computer back to life and helped a woman select age-appropriate books to read to an elementary school class.

Asked if he would want to be full-time, Gardner said he wasn't sure. 'I'd have to think about it. ' he said. 'Do I not want to teach” at Kirkwood?

Pipkin said she may like to work there full-time if the opportunity came up.

'But the way things are right now, I'm content,” she said. 'If the hours stay part-time, I'd be fine.”

Susan Craig, library director in Iowa City, said Iowa City's library also depends on part-time employees who do not get job benefits.

The Iowa City library has 35 full-time employees and 65 full-time equivalent employees when the part-timers are factored in, she said.

By way of comparison, Cedar Rapids' library has 30 full-time employees and 63.4 full-time equivalents when its part-timers are factored in.

Craig said many of the Iowa City library's part-time employees are classified as aides who don't do some of the tasks as some of Cedar Rapids' part-time staff.

Library aides in Iowa City earn between $9 and $12 an hour, she said.

Iowa City has one library building, Cedar Rapids, two. Both are open about the same amount of time a week, 68 hours in Cedar Rapids, 67 hours in Iowa City. Both circulate about same number of books and other materials: Cedar Rapids hit 1.5 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2015, with Iowa City at 1.4 million, according to the libraries' statistics.

l Comments: (319) 398-8312; rick.smith@thegazette.com

Disclosure: The Gazette Company and its president have contributed to the Our Library, Our Community campaign for the levy.