No tax increase for library network

POST FALLS — The Community Library Network budget was finalized Tuesday by trustees.

The proposed $8.4 million budget, which includes $2.4 million in reserve, will not be supported by increased property taxes, but will be balanced through funding cuts for programming, materials collections and some operations expenses. It includes 4% wage scale and cost of living increases to bring compensation for library district employees to market scale.

Regarding the reduction in programming, library staff will begin defining basic operational programming for each age: adults and youth, including early learning, school-aged children and teens.

“Staff will explore opportunities for expanding public-private partnerships, grants and donations to support ‘expanded’ library services that each community desires,” wrote Community Library Network Director Alexa Eccles in an email interview.

The library network is a taxing district that comprises towns outside Coeur d’Alene including Athol, Harrison, Hayden, Post Falls, Rathrum, Spirit Lake and Pinehurst in Shoshone County.

Taxing districts in Idaho are allowed by law to increase their budgets by a maximum of 3% and levy additional property taxes to fund those increases.

A 3% library network budget increase would amount to $149,916 in revenue that would be borne by all property owners throughout the district, likely with minimal impact to each property. For perspective, a Post Falls home with an assessed value of $479,000 before applying the homeowners exemption was billed $51.03 for the year in 2022, the equivalent of $4.25 per month, which was for the entire library network budget for that year, roughly $6.3 million.

The proposed budget does include an estimated $90,000 in tax base growth revenue.

The Community Library Network received 108 correspondences from the community since trustees discussed the budget last week, 90 of them in favor of a tax increase, 16 against and two neutral.

Potential Sunday closures at the only branches that are open Sundays — Post Falls and Hayden — which were discussed by trustees at a previous meeting, came up again as a means to save nearly $28,000 in annual operating costs.

“Most other government entities are closed on Sundays and this is not an emergency service. No one is going to bleed out if they don’t get a book on Sunday,” said Rachelle Ottosen, board chair.

She quoted Exodus from the Bible.

“‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work. The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates,’ so it sounds like we shouldn’t be causing other people to work as well as not working ourselves,” Ottosen said.

Former chair and longtime board member Katie Blank said the library is a government agency and needs to be available to everyone.

“To decide this issue based on a religion, I don’t think is what we need to do on a nonpartisan open board,” Blank said. “I understand that a lot of people are perhaps thinking the way you are thinking right now, but this isn’t what this board is about.”

Blank said the way to be respectful of every religion is to remain neutral, and that she would like to look at this issue from a neutral standpoint. Ottosen then went on to quote Revolutionary War-era Americans such as President George Washington about the need for God and Christianity in society.

“If we were to close on Sundays, that does not establish a religion. The founders felt that public education was a necessity so that the public could read the Bible and virtues common to the various religions were taught in the public schools, and that was all religions, it wasn’t a certain religion,” Ottosen said, adding her opinion that “much of what the library does is not the proper role of a library or the government in general.”

“It’s in our best interest to not dishonor God,” she said.

According to data from the July 20 board meeting, the Post Falls Library had an average Sunday door count of 103 people in June while the Hayden Library had an average Sunday door count of 142 people. Both sites had several meeting and study room uses on Sundays as well.

“I would think people will just learn to do that, to not use Sunday,” Trustee Tim Plass said. “It’s not like a hospital or a fire station or something that’s critical services.”

Assistant Community Library Network Director Lindsay Miller-Escarfuller, based on her 30 years of experience working in libraries, said a lot of families work Monday through Friday.

“You have families that also work on Saturdays and sometimes Sunday is literally the only day they can go to the library and help their kids with their homework,” she said. “You usually find a lot of families coming in to do rush homework jobs on Sundays, and by limiting that access, you’re hurting the education of those children and you’re putting parents who work one or two jobs at an even greater disadvantage because they cannot get to the library during regular business hours, so that’s something to consider.”

The proposed budget will be published in local newspapers and potentially adopted after a budget hearing before the public at 5:30 p.m. Aug. 10 at the Post Falls Library, 821 N. Spokane St. If trustees have no edits, they may choose to adopt the budget Aug. 17 at a meeting at the Hayden Library, or at a special meeting Aug. 18 if more discussion is needed.