In an attempt to reach a level of financial sustainability and seek recertification, the Wareham Free Library has teamed up with a group of professional consultants to create a plan for the library’s future.

Reference services librarian Deb Rich said the Library Foundation hired the Financial Development Agency to help them in the way it helped the town of Holyoke’s public library. Holyoke’s library reopened in 2013, after being shuttered, due to funding issues. The group came up with a plan in which the library received a portion of its funding from a special foundation set up to fund the library, and the rest from the town of Holyoke. Rich said Wareham’s library wants to do the same thing.

Currently, she said, the Friends are funding the basic operation of the Spinney branch with the leftover money from the building campaign that reopened and refurbished the branch, after its closure in 2014.

“The Friends shouldn’t be paying for operational costs,” Rich said. “They should be paying for programs and extras. … The town isn’t paying for Spinney at all, but that can’t continue.”

It costs $30,000 per year to keep the Spinney branch open. Though the town has granted the library an extra $30,000 to keep Spinney open in fiscal year 2017, Rich said it doesn’t take into account operational cost increases, such as an increase in electricity prices, and staff increases.

“We are working with a very tight budget, in which we have to weigh all the possibilities,” Rich said.

Rich said the library will be operating at a level service budget.

“If we stay level, at least we are still going forward,” Rich said. “Even though we would like to go a little more forward, we can accept staying the same another year.”

There is no concrete plan in place, yet, Rich said, because they have just started working with the group, and it is going to be a “several months’” process.