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July 6, 2010

Changing how town libraries are funded

http://www.nj.com
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Curt Yeske
SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
LAMBERTVILLE -- The supporters of the Lambertville Free Public Library may be few in number but they hope to have a loud and meaningful voice in how their library and similar libraries are funded throughout the state.

Volunteers recently initiated a letter-writing campaign asking their representatives in the State House to support a bill that would allow the cost of town libraries to be listed as a dedicated tax line item in municipal budgets. That would change the way they are funded and make them more independent from municipal planning.

County library systems in the state already enjoy that status and the people at the Lambertville library would like to have it too, said Deborah Mercer, a former director of the city library and volunteer letter writer.

The issue is of importance to the Lambertville City Council along with other local communities that have municipal library status. They include Trenton, Hamilton, Princeton Borough, Pennington, South Brunswick and Plainsboro.

Town officials say existing laws, which earmark a percentage of tax revenue for library expenditures, sometimes force them to raise more money than necessary for library budgets just so they can raise enough for other purposes.

Lambertville elected officials say they are being squeezed by two conflicting state laws. One says the city shall provide a sum equal to one third of a mill of its tax ratables exclusively for the library. That translates to $33 for a house assessed at $100,000. Two years ago that amounted to slightly more than $243,000 for the Lambertville Free Public Library.

But another state law, enacted in 2008, bans the city from raising its municipal budget by more than 4 percent. At that time, a 4 percent increase in taxes would have meant a hike of $37,000 for the library but just $13,500 for all other increased expenditures, according to Mayor David DelVecchio.

The city council two years ago pushed for a referendum to remove the library from its municipal status to make it a department of city government. Voters soundly defeated the proposal.

In a move to ease the city's revenue burden, the library has allocated about $110,000 of its own money to the city coffers in each of the past two years.

The library supporters see a way out of the bind with bill A2659 introduced by Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula, D-Somerset, and a companion measure in the state Senate by Nia H. Gill, D-Montclair.

Posted by tumulty at July 6, 2010 11:03 AM

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