Amid Budget Cuts, Library Looks To Community To Reopen

CHOCTAW COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – It’s the start of a new chapter for a local library that abruptly shut its doors last year.

It’s one of many libraries in our area struggling to stay open, as the government slashes spending.

Tanna Taylor, Director of the Tombigbee Regional Library System said in the past, more than a quarter of their budget for local libraries came from state funding.

She said in fiscal year 2015, they received $164,000 dollars from the state. But by 2017, that number went down to 80-thousand.

Obviously, there’s less money to keep the doors open, so leaders in one local community decided they’d be better off to go at it alone.

For a building containing so many stories, The Choctaw County Library has a story of it’s own.

“My children grew up going to this library and so did I,” Angie Moncrief said.

That’s why Angie Moncrief was disappointed when she found out the doors had closed.

“We don’t have a lot of things to offer, and that was one of the best things we had, was our library,” Moncrief said.

But today they’re officially turning the page, with the help of volunteers.

Cristin Henson is the new director of the new Choctaw County Library System.

“Depending on any type of guaranteed funds is never the answer, I don’t think. I think the answer is look at home, to look at the resources that you have and make the most of them, even if those resources are just the people there,” Henson said.

Henson said the 72-thousand dollars the county was paying to the Tombigbee Regional System each year will now stay in their community.

“That was enough money they felt, or fairly close to enough, to fund our own library here,” Henson said.

She’ll also look to grants and local donations, and said she’s confident the next chapter will be better than the last, in a story that’s far from finished.

Choctaw County has a second library in Weir that also closed. Henson said they hope to have that one open on a part-time basis soon.