Opinion: We don’t need a Library District

The Library District proposal, with its huge property tax increase, had serious problems with both its structure and funding. But worse, it has taken a relatively simple issue and turned it into yet another polarized debate. Yesterday I watched the video of Tuesday’s council meeting, I saw councilmembers struggling to come to agreement on even the basic LD issues. It became clear to me that there is no solid reasoning to support the creation of a Library District (LD). Every significant desire can be better or more easily met with actions that can be taken by the city on its own.

What I find irritating is that these alternative actions have not been explored. It’s as if the “good idea” of a LD has taken over the thinking. What should have been done is to identify the actual policy goals, and then explore the options to achieving them, with both pros and cons fully analyzed. Here’s a start:

Money:  Fundamentally, the advocates want the library to have more money to spend on providing more (already free) services and more branches. Their proposed solution is a huge property tax increase for both the city and surrounding areas. Since a significant amount of our sales tax (reportedly around 30%-40%) comes from the surrounding area, a sales tax increase is just as equitable regarding taxing the library users. And all that takes is the council putting it on the ballot.

Some claim that sales tax is regressive, but property tax is equally unfair, because it taxes people’s homes whose values have increased multiple times without any corresponding increase in the owners’ liquid assets. Also, property tax falls very heavily on commercial and other non-residential property, whose occupants are not the main library users. The figure I saw was that over 50% of the LD property tax revenue would come from non-residential property, almost all of which is inside the city limits. That’s real inequity!

Independence:  The advocates want the LD to be freer from influence of city officials, or so it appears. But under state law, the LD commissioners’ appointments must, at a minimum, be agreed to by both the council and the county commissioners. So, if more independence is a goal, why not simply select the same folks to be City library trustees and let them operate on their own, subject only to open meetings laws, their own budgetary constraints, etc.? Out-of-city folks can be included as advisors, or the city charter could be amended as necessary to allow their formal appointment.

Facilities:  There was a lot of discussion Tuesday night about whether to give away or just lease the library buildings to the LD. Although the discussion wasn’t conclusive, some of the advocates wanted to allow the LD to be able to mortgage the buildings to obtain more “financial flexibility” to increase their “chances of success.” Fortunately, giving away the buildings, or borrowing against them, did not seem to have strong support.

Neither did the idiotic notion of allowing the LD commissioners to have equal say regarding what happens in the area surrounding the main library. Allowing a group of unelected LD commissioners who cannot be recalled, whose decisions are not subject to being referred to a citizen vote, and do not face citizen initiatives, to borrow against buildings that they did not pay for, or have decision-making power over downtown planning, is completely irresponsible.

City Charter:  One issue that was not discussed is the possibility that the property tax that is dedicated by the Charter to the City’s libraries and has been in place for many decades might limit the discretion of the council in creating a LD. To take assets that were partially paid for by this dedicated tax and hand control over to another entity might be a Charter violation. This is another good reason to not consider giving anything away.

Voting:  The issue of how many times the LD can put their tax increase on the ballot was hotly debated. But this very need for multiple “bites of the apple” just points out that the arguments for a LD are not very strong. This is supported by the hundreds of emails to the council that (I was told) are strongly against the LD.

The council should drop the LD idea for the moment and simply put a dedicated sales tax increase on the ballot in November. Leave the rest of our very workable system as it is. This would be simple, sensible, and prudent.


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