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Tax Revolt Takes Aim at a County's Libraries
New York Times ^ | Tuesday, August 20, 2002 | By TIMOTHY EGAN

Posted on 08/20/2002 12:08:47 AM PDT by JohnHuang2

August 20, 2002

Tax Revolt Takes Aim at a County's Libraries

By TIMOTHY EGAN

KETTLE FALLS, Wash., Aug. 15 — One library doubles as a laundry room, where a person can clean a month of dirty clothes and pick up a Churchill biography in a single stop. Another shares a roof with a state liquor store — "books 'n' booze," people call it in jest.

The libraries of Stevens County, bounded by the Canadian border, national forests and two large Indian reservations, are among the most remote in the United States. They are also threatened with extinction.

A group of antitax crusaders are trying to shutter them, in an effort that the American Library Association says may be the first aimed at dissolving an entire county library system by referendum. In the last decade, parts of the rural West have had tax revolts against schools, public transportation and new parks. Now comes the first tax revolt against books.

Leaders of the campaign to eliminate the Stevens County Rural Library District say they are tired of paying property taxes for a service that helps people largely in the most out-of-the-way crannies, where a majority of the county's libraries lie. Besides, they say, rural libraries are increasingly obsolete, given the Internet, video outlets and discount bookstores.

Supporters of the initiative say they have gathered 2,800 signatures in a county of about 20,000 registered voters, far more than the 10 percent required to qualify the measure for the November ballot.

"With all the property I own, I'm probably paying up to $500 in taxes for the library, and that's just $500 wasted on something we don't need," said one supporter of the measure, Dave Sitler, a real estate agent.

Mr. Sitler, a member of the American Heritage Party, which calls for an end to all property taxes and for a government based on biblical tenets, also complains that the head librarian's annual salary of $51,000 is too high. "The salaries they pay those librarians, with health benefits and all that, it adds up," he said.

The Stevens County library system operates on a budget of a little more than $1 million a year, with a full-time staff of 10. It makes do in metal-roofed sheds, converted cabins and abandoned buildings. County records show that to help keep the county's nine book outlets running, the average household here pays about $38 a year in property taxes, the same as a month's basic cable television bill.

Without the library system, some county residents say, they would have almost no link to the outside world.

"I home-school my kids, and our four library cards are maxed out at 40 books at all times," said Linda Arrell, who lives off the electric power grid with her family north of here. "They say everybody is on the Internet, so we don't need a library. Well, some of us don't have credit cards, and some of us don't have power."

Passage of the measure — and Stevens County officials say they have yet to validate all the signatures needed to place it on the ballot — would amount to a small reversal of a philanthropic tradition that dates from Andrew Carnegie's campaign to seed rural America with sturdy libraries. The proposal would force Stevens County libraries to return more than $40,000 in free computers and software that the Gates Foundation gave them.

The library system's patrons, who say they will fight the measure down to the last Dewey decimal, argue that only about 150 taxpayers, mainly big corporations, pay more than $300 a year in library taxes. They also note that the libraries are increasingly popular: the county system says it adds about 220 new patrons every month and is on pace to circulate nearly 300,000 books this year, double the number of two years ago.

Stevens County, in the state's northeast corner, is separated from the Puget Sound area by both geography and outlook. In the information-thick prosperity of Seattle, residents have voted to raise taxes to pay for a new $159 million central library, designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

By contrast, people here often vote down local school levies, and the county's median household income, $33,387 a year, is about 25 percent below the state median, though there are some good-paying jobs in timber mills and with the Forest Service. Organic gardeners, growing peaches, wine grapes and garlic, have flourished, as have many farmers illegally growing marijuana.

The county's population grew by 29 percent in the last decade, but many of the newcomers are retirees who generally oppose taxes of all kinds. There have also been small but persistent groups of people who are strongly antigovernment, even some militia supporters.

In the village of Hunters, home to fewer than 200 people, the library operates two days a week, out of the Grange building.

"The library is so important in this town, especially in the winter, when there's not a lot to do," said Dianne Eppler, who runs an antiques store there. "When you start losing those things like a library, you lose the things that make a community. I mean, everybody needs a library."

But to others, the Jeffersonian idea that every farm town at the edge of the woods should have a library to go with its school and public square is dated. "When we were circulating the petition, we ran into people time and time again who said they pay all this money in library property taxes and they don't even use it," said one leader in the campaign, Karen Frostad, a cook for the school district. "When we told them what they were paying, they couldn't believe it. We just feel this is a very unnecessary tax."

As it happens, Ms. Frostad herself does not pay the county library tax, because she lives in Kettle Falls. The tax applies only to the county's unincorporated areas, even though some of the libraries lie within Kettle Falls and other incorporated towns.

Ms. Frostad said she used to volunteer in the library here, and noticed a trend. "You see very few children who come into the library," she said. "And the ones that do just want to see videos."

But the American Library Association says book circulation is up across the country among nearly all age groups, including children. A recent survey by the association, which represents 64,000 public libraries, found that book borrowing had increased 11 percent since March 2001.

"People thought computers were going to make libraries obsolete," said Larra Clark, a spokeswoman for the association, based in Chicago. "But our experience is just the opposite. People are calling reference librarians and saying: `I'm doing a Google search and getting a million things. Help!' "

Regan Robinson, the district library director, hopes that the campaign qualifies for the fall ballot, so that the county can have vigorous debate on the merits of taxation and public services.

"We're seeing a disconnect in our society," Ms. Robinson said. "People don't understand that you need tax money to pay for the public good. I'd like to see someone face the women I see every day with three kids and a stack of books and tell them they can't have a library anymore."

Though more than 2,000 people in these parts have signed a petition to abolish her job, Ms. Robinson has not soured on Stevens County.

"I love these people who depend on our libraries," she said. "They are wise and they are witty in ways that most people will never know."


TOPICS: News/Current Events
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Tuesday, August 20, 2002

Quote of the Day by irish_lad

1 posted on 08/20/2002 12:08:47 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
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To: JohnHuang2
Now comes the first tax revolt against books.

I love that line!
It's the kind of line everybody has come to expect from a news story published by the Gray Old Whore.

I am all for any tax revolt. And as far as the public libraries go these days, they seem to be turning into places where pedophiles and perverts can go and scope out children while they surf the porn sites on the library computers. All perfectly legal, and with the blessing of the ACLU.

2 posted on 08/20/2002 12:26:49 AM PDT by Lancey Howard
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To: Lancey Howard
I am all for any tax revolt. And as far as the public libraries go these days, they seem to be turning into places where pedophiles and perverts can go and scope out children while they surf the porn sites on the library computers. All perfectly legal, and with the blessing of the ACLU.

Well, to be fair, given the current laws they really don't have much choice in the matter. But I'd love to see the last few month's lists of books they've purchased. How many copies of "Bias," "Slander" and "The Final Days" vs. the number of copies of that Michael Moore piece of trash.

3 posted on 08/20/2002 12:33:25 AM PDT by Timesink
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