The Meadow Lake Library is no longer living on borrowed time when it comes to offering the same level of service patrons have come to know and love. Earlier this summer, it was reported the library could be facing potential cuts in terms of its 2026 operating hours. At the time, council directed administration to write a letter to the regional library board on behalf of council and affected residents, expressing concerns about these possible cuts and the impact they would have at the Meadow Lake branch. At the Sept. 8 meeting of city council, however, councillor Connie Marsh-Yuhasz – who represents council on both the local and regional library boards – announced the threat of cuts no longer exists.
“The regional chairperson came to our recent local library board meeting,” Marsh-Yuhasz told Northern Pride in a subsequent interview. “We thought she was coming to explain why the cuts were happening, but she had good news for us. They had just found out the week before there would be no more need to make cuts.” Marsh-Yuhasz went on to say, each year, the regional library board has to wait to see how much the province wants it to spend on new materials such as extra books. “Because the province ended up saying they didn’t need to spend more than Register today at worksafesask.ca/workshop Unlock your safety potential. Oct. 8, 2025 Western Development Museum North Battleford, SK expected, the cuts didn’t need to happen at the Meadow Lake branch,” Marsh-Yuhasz continued. “It totally makes sense because more and more people are using the Libby app and using their tablets to read books rather than borrowing actual physical books.”
Initially, it had been suggested Meadow Lake would have to reduce its operating hours by a total of about 18 per a given time period. “This likely would have greatly affected our Saturday hours as well as the staff who work there on Saturdays, and that is one of the bigger days the library has,” Marsh-Yuhasz said. “We are very happy to see that didn’t have to happen for 2026.” Many of Marsh-Yuhasz’s sentiments were echoed by Audrey Marsh, head librarian at the Meadow Lake Library. “We have been operating the same hours since 2022 and it has been working very well,” Marsh noted. “In June, at a management meeting, the Lakeland Library Region’s director told me they were going to cut our hours. We were only going to be able to be open Monday to Friday, we would close on Saturdays and our Saturday clerk would be laid off. After discussing this with the local library board, we sent a letter to the regional board indicating the decision was not acceptable based on our facility use statistics. On Sept. 3, the chair of the Lakeland Library Region board of directors attended our local board meeting and told us they were not cutting our hours after all.” Marsh went on to say she is very happy to know the library’s hours will not be reduced. “Saturday is the only day many people have available to use the library due to their work schedule,” she added. “It also gives us an extra day to schedule programs. Our Wednesday and Thursday evenings fill up very quickly and Saturday is the only other time for programming. Community groups often use our facility and we see a lot of families browsing the library on Saturdays as well.”
Going forward, Marsh-Yuhasz said time will tell if the library will be faced with any future cuts beyond 2026. “It was anticipated the region also wouldn’t get as much money from the province because the City of Lloydminster is no longer part of our library region,” she said. “We were expecting less money from the province, but we still got the same amount. And, as noted, the region was also waiting to hear from the province how much it wanted the region to use of that money for new books and collections.”