HAVERHILL LIBRARIES AND THE LAW

Adequate Service

To change the deadening system of year-after-year budget submissions devoid of substantive plans and to break away from continually substandard performance, citizens need to understand the legal requirements for establishing and funding a library and be able to pinpoint where responsibility lies for making library service adequate.

New Hampshire law does not require a town to have a library but if it does have one, it must appropriate money sufficient to provide adequate service. NH RSA Sect. 202-A:4 states: "Any city or town having a public library shall annually raise and appropriate a sum of money sufficient to provide and maintain adequate public library service therein or to supplement funds otherwise provided."

The law does not define adequate, but this does not mean that the town may ignore the requirement for adequacy. Each town must determine the service that fits its own citizen needs and financial limits, in other words, it must decide what is adequate and it must appropriate enough money to achieve it. The town voters have never addressed adequacy of service.