The Auburn Public Library will not renew a longstanding contract that allows Minot residents to use its services, bowing to pressure from city leaders who argued Auburn taxpayers were subsidizing the agreement.

The library board of trustees voted 6-1 March 24 to end the contract. Minot’s two trustees were not present; one had resigned prior to the meeting, while the other left the meeting before the vote.

Last month, city officials said calculations show that Minot and other nonresident cardholders were not paying their fair share of library costs, and that the city would withhold some of its annual library funding if the situation wasn’t rectified by trustees.

Others disagreed, saying the contract with Minot was beneficial for all parties involved.

Ultimately, the board weighed the revenue from the Minot contract — which would have paid the library $23,000 next year — against the roughly $31,000 the city said it would take from its library funding if the contract was kept in place.

“We made a financial decision based on what was in the best fiduciary interest of the library,” Board of Trustees President Rick Whiting said.

Auburn Mayor Jeff Harmon said last month his office calculated that Minot residents use roughly $54,000 worth of services from the library a year while only paying $23,000. Other nonresidents who pay for an Auburn library card are also being subsidized by the city, the calculations found, to the tune of several thousand dollars.

Earlier this year City Manager Phil Crowell Jr. reduced the library’s funding for 2027 by $37,653 — roughly $31,000 that Auburn officials feel Minot should be paying more, and nearly $7,000 the city feels nonresident cardholders should be paying more.

Using Auburn tax dollars to subsidize services for another town is prohibited by city policy, Harmon said.

Now that the Minot contract has ended, the city could end up paying more for library funding.

Calculating the loss of Minot’s $23,000 annual payment, the city reassessed its share of library funding under the current formula and found it would increase by $16,555 more than the $1.22 million the library originally asked for.

As it stands, the city presented a budget of $1.24 million for the library to the City Council.

However, city budget talks for the 2027 budget are in early stages and it is possible the library’s funding could get cut in the process, Harmon said. Councilors are trying to determine how various cuts to the proposed budget now would affect property tax rates and city services.

Whiting is optimistic that any potential library budget cuts that councilors make will not be as severe as the funding shortfall the library would have experienced had it continued to contract with Minot, he said.

“There’s going to be a hole either way,” he said. “The hole, from the board’s perspective, the hole would be less by taking the action it did. Nobody was happy about taking this action. It was a good relationship with Minot for years.”

It is still too early for library officials to know exactly how they might fill any funding gaps related to council budget reductions.

Trustees are against dipping into the library’s endowment because they are trying to grow it as part of an effort to ultimately reduce its dependency on the city, he said. The city covers more than 80% of the library’s budget; trustees want to reduce that to 60%.

As a result of the vote, the Minot members are no longer eligible to be on the board of trustees.

Lisa Cesare, a Minot Select Board member and now former library trustee, said it felt like she and the other Minot trustee, Nicole Rancourt, had little influence on changing the ultimate outcome.

During the February trustee meeting, she was not allowed to vote on the Minot service contract, a first in the seven years she had been on the board, she said. She had hoped to push the board to stand up against what she called a “bullied request” from the city.

However, it became apparent that trustees were feeling pressure to end the contract, she said. She resigned from the board March 23, the day before the meeting when the Minot contract was voted down.

Cesare is tasked with figuring out how to give Minot residents access to library services. Minot could decide to use the $23,000 approved at town meeting last month for Auburn to help people get library cards at other libraries, not just Auburn. But that would require people to pay up-front and get reimbursed.

It also complicates the field trips Minot Consolidated School takes to the library twice a year, she said. The Auburn library has also been a resource to help teachers at that school. Cesare does not know exactly how the school will be impacted.

It also complicates the situation for residents who use the library frequently and for families in the town who homeschool their children and use the library to supplement their learning, she said.

The roughly two-decadeslong partnership between the town and library has been beneficial for both sides, she argued. The library gets extra funding it would not have otherwise received and it is more economical for the town than creating and operating its own library.

Cesare said she is grateful to library staff who are helping Minot with the transition. She does not know what library services in the town will look like going forward.

“We’re just trying to, as a town now, try and come up with something as quickly as we can to try and not impact people,” she said.