The East Baton Rouge Parish Library’s funding is in the hands of the voters on Saturday, when they’ll be asked to approve a 9.5 mills property tax to fund the system for the next 10 years.
If the millage fails, the library will be without its primary funding source until an alternative can be found, and it will be forced to live off its fund balance until more funding is found. The next time a millage would be able to go before voters would be sometime in 2027.
Failure could also open a pathway for the city of St. George to further break away from the parish and form its own library system.
Andrew Murrell, the St. George City Council pro tem, proposed the breakaway at the June 6th council meeting, taking issue with how much money residents spend on the EBR library system.
It’s scheduled to be considered by the city council at its first meeting in July after it was delayed at the meeting, but Murrell said it will only happen if the parish-wide millage fails.
The library’s total budget is about $65 million. Murrell and other critics point to other library systems, like those in Dallas and Houston, that they say have less funding while providing similar services.
“ One, [the budget is] higher than the city of St. George's entire city budget,” he said. “And two, that is two to three times the spending in other comparable communities.”
Mary Stein, the assistant director at the library, said Murrell’s criticism is not an apples-to-apples comparison because the library systems mentioned are not funded through a dedicated millage, but a municipality's general fund. This leads to varied funding year over year and has these libraries pursuing multiple avenues of funding.
The East Baton Rouge library does not go out for bonds. Stein said this saves money over the long run.
“... (Our Capital improvement plan) is pay-as-you-go with no bonds or indebtedness,” Stein said. “As opposed to these other places that are either wrapped up into some giant county bond or some giant city bond or doing their own bonds, and then they have to service their debt for 10, 15, 20 or even 30 years.”
East Baton Rouge’s libraries are open longer, too.
“ We're open every day of the week, not just at the big library, but at every branch. They are not,” Stein said.
Some of the criticism comes from dedicated millages as a funding model. This is when tax dollars collected are marked solely for one project or department, meaning the money can’t be used elsewhere.
Murrell argues if the money weren’t dedicated, it could be put to use on things like criminal justice funding or road funding.
“ You've got a DA's office that says they don't have enough money, a public defender's office that is understaffed. You've got roadways that look like Swiss cheese,” Murrell said. “They've gotta have dollars allocated to them. If we continue siloing substantial amounts of money like this, you're not gonna be able to get to the library at some point to enjoy it.”
A “no” vote would not automatically free up funds dedicated to the library to be used by the rest of the parish. A new tax would need to be approved by the voters. Murrell argues that by lowering people’s tax burden, they may be willing to approve a tax on the ballot.
But there are those who like the dedicated millage model because of the protection it provides. Officials are not able to lower funding to the agency on a whim, meaning it is funded no matter what.
Stein said that was the origin of the library's millage. It was originally a general fund organization that was underfunded to the point it was relying on donations to source its books.
“ Before (we had a dedicated millage), we had been fighting for our slice of the general fund pie, and our slice was smaller and smaller and smaller, and finally there was not even a book budget, and we were relying on gift books,” Stein said.
Along with the money allocated for the library system, Murrell argues that residents of St George are not getting their money’s worth.
Numbers from the Baton Rouge Tax Assessor’s office show the city of St. George pays an estimated $14.6 million into the library system. It’s the third largest contributor behind the city of Baton Rouge and the unincorporated part of the parish.
Murrell said St. George is a “book desert,” pointing out that only the Jones Creek Library is within the city limits.
While Stein points out that the Bluebonnet Library is just outside the city lines, Murrell says the main issue is that St. George only has one library despite contributing as much as it does. He says having a library in a neighborhood can raise home values and act as a meeting place, he argues.
“ So we can pay for it, but we gotta go drive to go get it, whereas other people don't pay as much as we do, so we're gonna put it right there for them,” he said.
Stein points out that other places like Zachary and Central also don’t have libraries nearby, and that areas with more libraries have populations who might not have the ability to drive.
“The people in the lowest income neighborhoods where the children walk or ride their bikes, they're the ones where you're gonna see a denser population, and you're gonna see that foot traffic,” Stein said.
