A concerned citizen's thoughts on the new Twinsburg Public Library Levy:
Fundraising, grants, foundations, no matter how successful, cannot raise enough immediate funds to sustain general operations on an annual basis. The only recourse to a library administration that has already cut every line item it can without laying off staff, not buying materials that library patrons demand, or reducing library hours and services is to ask the voters to support a library levy.
The other alternative is to cut all those services and materials that local residents are flocking to public libraries to use during this economic downturn. This reminds me of the old adage of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Ohio libraries haven’t just begun dealing with a loss of revenue; they’ve been dealing with it for seven years. At the beginning of this cycle, many libraries dependent entirely on state funding froze salaries and stopped buying books and audio-visual materials.
Libraries with local levies, such as the Twinsburg Public Library, worked hard to spend both state and local tax revenues wisely. Unfortunately state support has been “slip, slip, sliding away.” Along with the warning of a projected 10% cut in the next state biennium budget, local funding will also be reduced with the local tangible personal property tax gradually being cut each year until it is gone entirely by 2018. The tangible personal property tax affects businesses only, so the average tax payer may be unaware of it.
Perhaps it all boils down to this – how much of a hardship is it to pay $3 to $5 more a month to keep our Library operating at its current level or better? As someone on a fixed income who visits the library weekly, I receive my tax support back in trade every single time I walk through those front doors. I guess that I would have to respond that it would be more of a hardship for me to lose the great resources and services our public library offers than paying the new tax, so next Tuesday I’m voting YES on issue #3.
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