The Findlay-Hancock County Public Library has a levy renewal on the March 17th primary ballot.

Director Sarah Clevidence says the library continues to be a valuable resource for tens of thousands of people.

She says they have more than 30,000 card-holders and last year loaned out more than 1.1 million items.

“Our patrons, 90 percent of the things they check out are still physical items that they want to come get from the library, the book that you can hold in your hand and sit with your child and snuggle up and read that bedtime story.”

She says their children’s programming has grown tremendously over the last five years.

“Last year we had 417 programs for kids of all ages that were attended by nearly 20,000 people, so the last time we had a levy renewal on the ballot we’ve had tremendous growth within our children’s department.”

Clevidence says the state is funding public libraries at 1998 levels, making this levy renewal very important.

She says they are consistently ranked as one of the top 40 libraries in the state and had more than 300,000 visitors last year.

The 0.5 mill five-year levy would cost the owner of a 100,000 home $18 a year.

Clevidence recently took over as director of the library. Read more about that here.