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• Dede
• Mamie
Monday, December 08, 2008
By RONALD LEIR
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
Advocates for the Bayonne Public Library predict disaster if the Legislature enacts a recent recommendation by the League of Municipalities to slash funding for municipal libraries in half during fiscal year 2009.

Carmine Borzelli, president of the Bayonne Public Library Board, said this isn't the first time the league has targeted libraries for fiscal pruning. "We've turned them back a couple of times in past years but now they're at it again," he said.

State law currently requires municipalities that have set up libraries by public referendum - which includes most of the state's 300 libraries - to dedicate a fixed amount of local tax dollars to the library. The league wants that fixed amount cut in half.

On a statewide basis, the current amount averages about 33 cents on a property assessed at $100,000, according to Pat Tumulty, executive director of the New Jersey State Library Association.

"That's a very tiny portion of the average homeowner's property tax bill," Tumulty said.

But the league - in a resolution passed at its annual conference on Nov. 21 - stated that since the law mandating the dedicated library tax was passed in 1944, the value of real estate has skyrocketed to the point that "the amount each municipality is required to contribute... far exceeds the reasonable needs and requirements of the free public libraries."

League Executive Director William Dressel argued last week: "In these fiscally distressed times, why should this particular service be sacrosanct over other services, like police, fire and senior services?"

If the cut goes though, Bayonne Library Director Sneh Baines said she'd have to review her budget "line by line" to adjust to a 50-percent chop of the $62,000 slice in annual library aid Bayonne uses for its automated circulation service, online cataloguing of books and Internet computer phone lines.