People support what they invest in and that feeling of ownership is certainly the case with the Friends of the Joyce K. Carver Memorial Soldotna Public Library as the group presented the City with a check for $21,000 at the Wednesday meeting last week. “We raised the money from a series of different events from book sales to art auctions. The community and businesses have really stepped up and supported us in this dollar for dollar match,” said Friends of Library president Tom Janz. “Last year, we gave the City $12,000. This $33,000 was given to meet a dollar for dollar match grant from the Rasmuson Foundation for furniture, fixtures, and equipment for the Library’s recent renovation and expansion. This match is in addition to the $395,000 outright grant given to the City by the Rasmuson Foundation,” explained Janz.

At the Soldotna City Council meeting Janz was joined by Elaine Woodburn, Nancy Hennings, and Mary Lou Wilcox who presented the check to Rachel Nash, the City Librarian. “The support from the community has been overwhelming in developing our amazing facility,” said Nash, “It’s our goal now for library to give back and help to strengthen the community in every way that we can. We hope folks will come in and enjoy our summer reading programs, we also have movies every Wednesday at 2:30pm with story times year round and our teen program every Friday from 4:00 – 5:00pm and we now have a play station four that is super exciting, so come in and give us your suggestions and ideas,” she said.

“We would like to thank the Rasmuson Foundation, all donors, past and present Friends of the Soldotna Library members, volunteers, and local businesses who made this possible. None of this would have been possible without the huge support the Library receives from everyone in the community,” said Janz. According to Janz the Friends of the Library will continue fund raising efforts to keep adding new items and art for the library. Anyone interested in joining the group can get more information from Tom Janz or Rachel Nash at the Soldotna library.