Essex County Library Board to put agreements of service in place with municipalities it serves

By Sylene Argent, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Essex Free Press

With help from the County of Essex, the Essex County Library Board will work with all seven local municipalities to get agreements of service in place.

Those agreements will lay out the level of service benchmarks, heating and cooling agreements, health and safety expectations, or any other requirements the Essex County Library Board and/or the municipality in which it serves sees fit.

The Essex County Library Board unanimously passed that resolution at the Wednesday, June 25 meeting, where two board members were absent.

Vice Chairperson of the Essex County Library Board, Sherry Bondy, who also serves as the Mayor for the Town of Essex, presented this resolution.

Locally, the Essex County Library is overseen by a Board of the County of Essex. It has 14 branches in all seven municipalities. Through this system, the local municipalities provide the building, and the Library Board operates its service out of the space. Not all library systems operate this way.

Bondy sees it as a landlord/tenant relationship. Just as there would be rules and guidelines around responsibilities in those agreements, she sees the collaboration between municipalities and the Library Board similarity.

“It has been lacking,” she said of agreements.

This also helps members of the public understand it is not the Library Board being the bad guy if services have to be pulled from a branch.

Bondy noted there have been issues with air quality at the temporary Stoney Point location dating back to 2023.

Back in May, the Municipality of Lakeshore announced it was investigating the cause of air quality issues at the temporary facility, a 24-foot by 40-foot mobile unit owned by the municipality. At that time, it was closed to the public and library staff.

Information from Lakeshore noted the closure follows a previous closure in 2024, when Lakeshore received complaints of eye and throat irritation from library staff and visitors. Additional testing suggested that the issue was caused by the HVAC unit’s air exchange system, which was fixed in January 2025.

In addition, the Essex County Library system had to close the Amherstburg Branch last week, due to the extreme heat.

Knowing that “got me digging deeper into [it],” Bondy said of agreements.

She explained “it is up to the local municipalities to have a safe environment to offer library services.”

With those issues in mind, Bondy began thinking about what could be done to ensure the roles of the Library Board and municipalities were black and white. “How can we prevent something like this from happening again in the future and how can we define everyone’s roles and responsibilities, so that we can have a great level of customer service?”

Putting together said agreements would just lay out the responsibilities in ensuring everyone is fulfilling their responsibilities.

In addition, the agreements will define who is responsible for maintaining sidewalks leading up to the library branches, who salts ice, and at what level of service.

“This way, we can look at all levels of service, and actually have it in writing, [to see if] we need to increase the level of service, or if we are satisfied with the current level of service.”

Bondy found it surprising such agreements were not already in place.

“I just never really would have fathomed that this wasn’t in place, because everybody has to be accountable, and there just wasn’t that accountability,” Bondy added.

She continued that if there are issues with another branch in the future, with agreements in place, changes can happen immediately, so the service can get back in place faster.

She believes it will take some time for the terms to be drafted for consideration. It is timely, however, as the Cottam Branch, for instance, will soon get its new space in a new shared facility. An agreement could even spell out how much library space is required, so that is known before municipalities build new, when that time comes.

“I like to fix things,” Bondy said of moving this file forward. She said it is the job of board members and Councillors to identify and fix issues, where there is a policy lacking.