WASHINGTON

In their first regular meeting of 2024, the Washington County Supervisors received on Jan. 2 the annual allocation requests from the county MiniBus and the county Public Library Association as well as details about how all the funds are used.

The Washington County MiniBus is the only demand response transportation system in its region, part of a seven county one consisting of Washington, Linn, Cedar, Johnson, Benton, Iowa and Jones counties. The on-demand service means a ride can be arranged the day it is needed, rather than requiring a day’s notice. The other six counties have fixed routes. There are a total of 17 regions in the state.

Funding for the service, which provides transportation for individuals to medical appointments, employment, day programs, schools, shopping, recreation, and social needs comes from fees (28%), the East Central Iowa Council of Governments (ECICOG, 27%), Local Option Sales Tax (37%), Washington County (6%), and City of Kalona (1%), plus miscellaneous donations, whose amounts vary.

Kalona is the only city that has regularly allocated funds to the Minibus and “scholarships rides” were provided for 345 passengers from individuals or service groups donations. In the last fiscal year that meant 50,799 rides covering 206,430 miles, an 8% increase from the previous year.

Currently the service has total of 16 buses, all handicapped accessible, eight to nine buses in operation on the roads daily with seven full-time and 11 part-time employees. However, it was stressed that the service is always looking for drivers. Last fall, the Minibus received three new buses through ECICOG, and will auction off the older ones this year.

Its funding request from the county remained unchanged at $50,000.

The second allocation request, from the Washington County Public Library Association (WCPLA), which consists of libraries in Washington, Kalona and Wellman, is $156,750, which reflects a 5% reduction as requested by the county budget guidelines for fiscal 2024-25. State code requires a minimum funding of 0.0675 per $1,000 valuation to support library services. Currently, the City of Washington funds services at $1.43 per $1,000, City of Kalona at $1.81 and City of Wellman at $2.16. The county funding for rural residents is $.20 per assessed value. If the county level is reduced to the minimum funding code level, the libraries will not be able to maintain the long-time high service level provided by the WCPLA.

Those services include an IT service contract for 24/7 tech support for all three county libraries; continuing education reimbursement of staff training updates and conference attendances; more than 150,000 ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines available for download; movie licenses for all three libraries to show movies to the public; and summer reading performers at each library.

In terms of circulation for 2022, Washington served 27.6 % of rural residents and 63.90 city; Kalona 58.66 rural, 22.86 city; Wellman, 14.08 rural, 13.25 city. However, Wellman is in the process of completing a major addition to its library, expected to be done in March, and Kalona also serves the city of Riverside via a contract with Kalona.

In terms of Kalona patrons, right now that is 3,426 (1,342 Kalona residents, 236 Riverside, 912 rural county, 936 Open Access patrons; in terms of actual visitors for Kalona that was 30,748 with 6,624 attendance at its 176 programs. In Washington, visitors were more than 61,311.

The full annual report is available at the libraries and at the county auditor’s office.