Change sought in management of bequest to Marine on St. Croix library

Elizabeth Whipple Jordan loved reading and the library in her adopted hometown of Marine on St. Croix. She was a close friend of the late Grace Mary Grady, the longtime Marine librarian who made the library a welcoming place for children by keeping a huge bowl filled with M&Ms and putting up a big sign that said “Absolutely NO silence.”

When Jordan died in 2000, she left a bequest of nearly $227,000 to the Washington County Library system “to be used specifically for the Marine on St. Croix Library and in any manner which is deemed appropriate by the Board of Administration.” Since that time, county officials have managed the trust and granted an annual stipend to the Marine Library from those assets.

Now, Marine Library Association members are asking county officials to turn over the management of the trust, now worth $238,018, to the St. Croix Valley Foundation.

“We think setting it up with the St. Croix Valley Foundation is a preferable approach for all involved,” said Jim Maher, president of the Marine Library Association. “We’ll have a better handle on what is going on with the money if we can get it into the foundation, plus we can do more with it.”

The library association last year started an endowment fund for the library that is managed by the Hudson, Wis.-based St. Croix Valley Foundation.

If managed by the foundation, the money could be invested in high-yield funds, Maher said. Funds left to the county can only be invested in lower-yielding, fixed-income funds.

“The bequest is dwindling away as we take money out of it,” Maher said. “If it were invested for the long term, we could get more money out of it without the principal being depleted as quickly.”

The association generally asks county officials to approve the use of about $6,000 from the trust each year, but in 2020, when the library was closed due to COVID, they made a $15,000 request in order to renovate the library and revamp its website.

“We just want to make sure that there is transparency,” Maher said. “It’s a concern when we don’t quite have our fingers on what is happening with the money – either from an earning standpoint or from the spending standpoint.”

In a letter to county officials sent earlier this year, Maher wrote that he knew that the management of the fund has “added an administrative task for Washington County that the county does not directly benefit from.

“With the establishment of the Marine Library Association’s endowment, we believe the endowment might be a more appropriate vehicle to consider for these assets,” he wrote. “Under the Marine Library Association’s arrangement with the St. Croix Valley Foundation, the library receives only annual distributions equivalent to the income generated by the endowment, so the long-term nature of the Jordan bequest would be honored if that money was part of the Marine Library’s endowment.

Washington County officials are reviewing the request and no decision has been made, said Jacquie Kramer, director of the Washington County Library system.

Jordan’s is the only bequest ever made to the county’s library system, she said.

A few years ago, there was a push for the formation of a Washington County Library system foundation to handle gifts like Jordan’s, but county board members “ultimately decided that it is the county’s responsibility to fund our libraries at the appropriate level and have not moved forward,” Kramer said.

Commissioner Fran Miron, who represents the area, said county officials want to make sure they are living up to the obligations of the bequest.

The Marine Library Association “would like to see that funding maybe go to a foundation and then, hopefully, generate additional returns that keep that fund whole,” he said Tuesday during the Washington County Board meeting. “My focus, and staff’s focus, as well, has been on the fiduciary responsibility that we have as a county.”

Jordan, who was 88 when she died, left similar bequests to her alma mater, Carleton College in Northfield; to Twin Cities Public Television; and to the YMCA of St. Paul. She had no children.