Washington County board OKs Monday library hours; Sunday, too, in Woodbury

• Park Grove Library

Washington County's libraries -- including the Park Grove branch in Cottage Grove -- will have Monday hours again in 2013. Woodbury's R.H. Stafford Branch will also reopen on Sundays. Bulletin photo by Jon Avise.

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Washington County libraries will open on Mondays in 2013 – and Sundays, too, at the county’s busiest library, in Woodbury, after Washington County commissioners authorized the new hours at its Oct. 2 meeting in Stillwater.

The 2013 library schedule will restore Monday hours at the R.H. Stafford in Woodbury, Park Grove in Cottage Grove, Oakdale, Wildwood and Hardwood Creek branches, opening those libraries from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. The smaller Valley branch in Lakeland will open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Mondays.

Washington County will also restore Sunday hours at Woodbury’s Stafford branch from 1 to 5 p.m., beginning Jan. 1, 2013. It is part of a pilot program that will reopen the county’s busiest library between Labor Day and Memorial Day on what library officials say has traditionally been the system’s busiest day.

Deep cuts to the county’s 2012 library budget forced the closure of all libraries on Sundays and Mondays this year. Washington County’s two smallest branches, in Newport and Marine on St. Croix, were shuttered, as well, and replaced with kiosks for book drop-off and pick-up. Newport has since opened a city-run, part-time staffed library and reading room housed in the former branch library on Seventh Avenue.

A shift of unexpected revenue from the Property Records and Taxpayer Services department and the delay of internal technology upgrades will cover the added $284,000 cost of the added hours in 2013, county officials say.

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