The divorce between the North Mankato Taylor Library and the Traverse des Sioux Library System appears to be final after the North Mankato City Council rejected a services contract from TdS.

The North Mankato library will continue to officially be a member of TdS, but it will make no payments and receive no services from the regional system following years of increasingly strained relations.

“At this point, we’d function as a stand-alone library,” said City Administrator Wendell Sande Monday, shortly before the council voted unanimously to reject the $17,564 contract.

Council members said they don’t expect patrons of the North Mankato library to experience reduced services.

“It just ends the delivery service and the interlibrary loan program, which we weren’t using anyway,” said Mayor Gary Zellmer.

North Mankato residents will no longer be able to directly order books from the other libraries around the region and state, and when they visit other libraries, their cards will not be usable. (College and university libraries are an exception.)

And North Mankato’s library’s books will not be available to people from outside the city unless they come to the library in person.

But city officials said city residents will still have access to virtually all books and other materials.

“If they come and ask for a book, the book will be obtained,” said Councilman Billy Steiner.

In many cases, the city will purchase a book that’s requested by a patron but isn’t in the library’s collection, said Library Director Lucy Lowry.

Lowry also implied city librarians have methods of borrowing materials from other libraries.

“There are ways of handling things outside the regular system,” she said. “We try to be creative.”

Lowry said her library’s circulation numbers have been rising steadily and have set local records every month since October. That shows patrons are satisfied with their service, and she predicts that will continue to be the case.

“I don’t think they’re going to notice any difference at all,” she said.

Patty Biesterfeld, the acting executive director of TdS, said North Mankato’s decision will force TdS to use reserve funds to balance its budget this year. The remaining 16 libraries in the system won’t be asked to pay more, and services provided by TdS won’t be reduced this year.