Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
The Linn Library League will ask for the Sweet Home City Council’s support this month to form a countywide library district.
To allow the voters in individual cities to vote on the formation of the new district, each city council in Linn County will need to pass a resolution to include their cities on the November ballot.
The Lebanon City Council has already passed a resolution to place the district before Lebanon voters, said Linda Ziedrich of the Linn Library League. The organization still seeks resolutions from Albany, Sweet Home, Scio, Harrisburg, Millersburg, Tangent, Halsey, Waterloo and Sodaville.
Brownsville City Council turned down the district last year, Ziedrich said.
Sweet Home city staff asked Linn Library League officials to run new tax numbers based on 2007 rates and property values prior to appearing before the council, City Manager Craig Martin said. The council will be most interested in how the new district impacts Sweet Home’s police levy.
The new numbers also will assume that a proposed Oregon State University Extension Service District is approved with a tax rate of 7 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, Ziedrich said.
Sweet Home Police Department and the Public Library are almost completely funded by local option levies, which must be renewed every four years. Measure Five of 1990 caps general government tax rates at $10 per $1,000 of assessed property value.
When combined general government tax rates exceed the $10 limit, tax rates are decreased on a property-by-property basis to reach the limit. Local option levies, such as the ones that fund the library, Police Department and Linn County Sheriff’s Office, are decreased prior to permanent district rates.
Once local option levies are reduced to zero, permanent rates are decreased to meet Measure Five limits. The formation of a library district would create a permanent tax rate of 68 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, meaning that reductions in the rate would apply after the levies that fund the Police Department and Sheriff’s Office are reduced to zero.
If the district is approved by voters in November, the Sweet Home library levy, which is 62 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, would just go away, Ziedrich said.
The Measure Five reductions in tax rates are called “compression.”
“The one problem in Sweet Home is the police levy,” Ziedrich said. “(Police Chief) Bob Burford is very concerned about (the proposed district).”
The last tax run by the county assessor’s office projected $14,000 in compression for the Police Department’s local option levy. That tax run used some 2006 information and did not include the possible voter approval of the Extension Service district.
The Extension Service is estimating compression of $4,634 on the police levy and $447 on the library levy for the formation of its district.
The department already has approximately $160,000 in compression, Burford said. The effect of forming new districts and permanent rates has a cumulative effect.
The now out-of-date figure of $14,000 of compression caused by the district “is about five months worth of fuel to keep the police cars on the road,” Burford said.
Ziedrich hopes to have the new compression information prior to the Sweet Home City Council’s Feb. 12 meeting.
If the information is not ready, then the library district would probably come before the council at its Feb. 26 meeting, Martin said.
The Library League needs to get resolutions from Linn County cities as quickly as possible, Ziedrich said. The resolutions set what Linn County cities will be included of the district, but without a resolution from the county commissioners, the league will have until May 1 to gather 11,000 signatures to place the district on the November ballot.
Other cities, like Albany and Lebanon, already fund libraries from their general funds.
While the exact method is not set yet, they will reduce their overall levies by the amount of the new district permanent rate, Ziedrich said. An Albany official has suggested reducing a local option levy that partially funds police services there instead of reducing the permanent rate, using the general fund to offset the reduction in that levy.
Such solutions would decrease the overall compression impact in those communities.
The Library League’s most recent opinion poll showed 71 percent support for the new district, Ziedrich said.
“We’re trying to get it on the ballot so people in Linn County can vote for it,” Sweet Home Library Director Leona McCann said. The goal “is to educate, to inform and allow the choice.
“It’s getting exciting because the footwork has been done. Now it’s time to advance to the city councils.”
McCann also is concerned about the compression impact, she said. “We can’t have Sweet Home without police. We need to figure out a system where the public safety departments are funded.”
The Library League has been working on the new district for about four years, she said.
In that time, the league has operated a bookmobile funded by a state library grant and a grant from the Meier Memorial Trust, Ziedrich said. “The goal was to show people what library service is because so many of our rural residents have no library service.”
The bookmobile provided rural residents access not only to books carried aboard the vehicle but also to books on the shelves of area libraries, she said. That helped make the bookmobile popular with the people across the county.
Funding will run out this spring, although the league will stretch out the funding as long as possible, she said.
For more information about the Linn Library League and the proposed library district, visit http://www.linnlibraryleague.org, or call Linda Ziedrich (503-394-3643) or May Garland (503-394-3696).