Carolyn Reiste went before the Warwick Township supervisors on Nov. 4, the night after Lancaster County voters said no to a dedicated tax for libraries.
The executive director of the Lititz Public Library thanked the township for its support, about $84,700 a year, or $4.50 for each of Warwick’s 19,022 residents, LNP | LancasterOnline reported. Then she pointed to the vote count from the referendum her library had hoped would pass.
“That’s more than 76,000 people who believe in the value of public libraries and wanted to see them have the resources to do even more for their communities,” she said. “I am incredibly grateful for every one of those votes.”
What the referendum would have done
The Nov. 3 ballot question asked county voters to approve a 0.55-mill property tax increase dedicated to public libraries. It would have raised about $44 million and cost the median household about $180 a year, FOX43 reported. Supporters noted that Lancaster County libraries get roughly a third of the national average in funding.
About 63% of voters rejected it. Republicans opposed the measure as too heavy a tax burden, and State Senate-elect Tom Jones said the question was “wildly unpopular with Democrats, Independents and Republicans” and helped drive turnout.
The effects showed up within days. The Intercourse Library announced it will close its Gap branch because of the funding shortfall.
Reiste’s case for the library
Reiste has made the same argument in every forum since the vote: the library is ordinary infrastructure for a lot of people’s days. “The library is a part of people’s everyday life,” she told FOX43.
She has also been specific about what the money would have bought. “We would have been able to increase the number of programs that we have for our children and for our adults,” she said. “We would have been able to provide staff to just answer what some of those community needs are.”
Without it, Lititz, like the county’s other libraries, now has to build its next budget on the money it already gets, from local municipalities, the county, the state and donors.
Two years in the job
Reiste took over the Lititz library in 2024, after Ryan McCrory left. She came from Adamstown Area Library, another member of the Library System of Lancaster County, and holds a master’s in library and information science from Clarion, now part of PennWest, according to the library’s fall 2024 newsletter. She lives in Lititz with her family.
She has been making the funding argument to the same board for months. At the supervisors’ Aug. 18 meeting, while the Vote Yes 4 Libraries campaign was still gathering signatures to get the question on the ballot, she told them that some municipalities give their local library nothing, while Manheim Township runs its library as a department of the township. That patchwork, she said, means access and services vary from one end of the county to the other, and the renovations Lititz had just finished could be at risk without steady money.
An expansion still ahead
Reiste’s tone with the supervisors was not gloomy. “We have a lot to look forward to, especially with our library expansion, and I’m excited about what’s ahead for Lititz Public Library,” she said, before running through the library’s programs.
Reiste has said she hopes continuing to serve residents well will persuade more of them over time. “I do hope that by continuing to serve our community well, we have people who, again, continue to see the value of the public library,” she said.
The referendum result is one of several local decisions shaping the borough’s finances this fall. Lititz Borough Council has opened its own 2027 budget talks, the first since the countywide property reassessment.
Warwick Township supervisors meet again Nov. 18 at 7 p.m., with a budget workshop at 6:30 p.m., at the municipal building at 315 Clay Road.