CAZENOVIA — On Monday, Aug. 28, the Cazenovia Public Library & Museum (CPL) Board of Trustees voted to officially eliminate fines for overdue borrowed materials.

In the summer of 2020, CPL stopped collecting fines to provide financial relief to patrons during the COVID-19 pandemic. The library has been operating fine free “under amnesty” ever since.

On Aug. 28, the trustees were asked to vote on whether to start collecting fines again or to officially codify the elimination of fines. The board’s decision to go fine free was unanimous.

According to CPL Director Elisha Davies, the elimination of library overdue fines has become increasingly prevalent over the past decade.

Of the 43 libraries in the Mid-York system, 30 are now fine free. In Madison County, Oneida is now the only Mid-York library to continue to collect fines. In the neighboring Onondaga County, Manlius, Fayetteville, and all the downtown city libraries have also eliminated fines.

“It’s been a plan for years to eliminate fines, and the timing was right to make it happen,” said Davies on Aug. 29. “Since 2020, we’ve been very relaxed with collecting fines so it was a good test to see if and how we could manage going fine free. The initial reaction is [to think] that books will not be returned and [will be] kept indefinitely, but people continue to be good library users. In 2018, Mid-York enabled member libraries to have automatic [renewals]. When a book is due and no one is waiting for it or it hasn’t already been renewed twice, it’s automatically renewed. This cut down the number of overdue items we had, and by 2019, overdue fines accounted for less than .5 percent of our budget.”

In a document prepared for the trustees’ review in advance of the vote, Davies outlined several ways that fines can constrain a library’s ability to serve its community.

According to the document, CPL is aware of multiple times when the risk of owing money has deterred people — often lower-income families — from borrowing from the library, creating an “unnecessary block to literacy and learning.” Individuals who end up owing money might also be less likely to return to the library to take advantage of other services, such as adult and children’s programs, the museum and art gallery, the Internet, the copier, or the Carriage Barn Books storefront.

The document also points out that prior to 2020, CPL staff spent hours each month calling patrons to track down lost books, recording fine and payment transactions, and explaining accrued fines to disgruntled patrons.

“It’s the library’s role to provide access, not police responsibility or punish,” Davies wrote.

Another issue under CPL’s former fining policy was that staff members were inconsistent when deciding when to waive a patron’s fines and when to collect them, leading to patron confusion.

The document also provides examples of libraries that eliminated fines and subsequently reported an increase in new patrons, donations, and/or a spike in the return of assumed-lost items.

“Cazenovia Library has a very high approval rating in our community, and going fine free would only support this reputation,” the document states. “Collecting fines used to be a way for the public to support the library, now it’s time for us to support the public. We have other avenues of support, [such as] Carriage Barn Books [and] the Friends. Going fine free shows the public that we are an inviting place for everyone.”

CPL’s new policy

Under the new fine-free policy, item checkout periods will remain the same.

Books, audiobooks, CDs, periodicals, five-plus hour/nonfiction DVDs, fishing rods, and lawn games can be checked out for three weeks, while feature film DVDs and museum and park passes can be borrowed for one week. Fines will still be collected for overdue museum and park passes to ensure that they are returned in a timely manner so they can be loaned to the next patron.

An item that is not returned on time will be automatically renewed on its due date unless another patron has a hold on the item and/or the item has already been renewed twice. Patrons who are signed up for text and email notifications will be alerted of their new due date.

According to Davies, an item that is not returned one month past its due date will automatically be assumed lost. The patron will receive a reminder call, their account will be billed for the cost of the item, and their card will be blocked, restricting them from borrowing additional materials or downloading digital eBooks and audiobooks. If the item is still not returned, usually around month three, a formal letter will be mailed to the borrower requesting the item be returned and citing New York State Education Law Section 265, which states whoever willfully detains any library material is subject to legal action.

Once the item is returned or paid for, the account will no longer be blocked, and the patron will have full borrowing ability again.

Fees will continue to be collected for copier and public printer use.

CPL is located at 100 Albany St, Cazenovia. For hours and more information, call 315-655-9322 or visit cazenoviapubliclibrary.org.