Indy Library Launches New 5 Year Plan

The Indianapolis Public Library formally launched its new five year strategic plan called “Yours to Experience."

The 44-page document was unveiled, Monday, and is used as the blueprint for how the Library will grow through 2020.

For the past year, 150 community and business organizations have worked on putting together its five year plan including forming nine task forces.

The current one expires this year.

Public Services Director Laura Johnson says the goal of the new plan is to align the Library with other local organizations to address community needs such as education, work force skills, and economic development.

"That's where the richness of the task forces that were devoted to those topics came into play," said Johnson.  "The whole plan benefits from the contributions of those organizations, but likewise then we can enhance their efforts by providing materials and resources in supporting those efforts with the information we can offer."

The new plan includes increasing mobile access and relocating branches.

But, Johnson admits it’s a challenging time financially for the Library because of property tax caps.  She says since they went into effect in 2009, the Library collects about six million dollars less a year.

"We are doing some refinancing and have been doing some refinancing of our debt to offset some of the interest payments that are necessary," she said.  "There's a variety of changes that we are making in our financial picture across the board, addressing those in our proposed budget for next year."

Johnson does expect next year’s budget to increase by about a $1.5 million to $39.8 million.

She says the first step in implementing the plan is site selection for new and relocating branches.