Jane Grover: The question of separate taxing bodies

     The current total Evanston library budget is a little over $5M for 2009-10, or about $67 per Evanston resident, $169 per household. However the libraries generate almost $300,000 in fees, fines and other revenue, and also are responsible for $90,000 in annual revenue from the state of Illinois, so the net general fund cost is actually only about $63 per Evanston resident for the entire library system. Most of that is attributable to the main library and central services.
     Undoubtedly there is some additional HR, legal, and finance overhead attributable to the libraries, but I have not seen any costing-out of that by any candidate, staffer, or commentator here.
     The 2008-09 budget showed less than 6 FTEs allocated to the two branch libraries. It's impossible to tell how that changed for 2009-10 because the published website version of the budget omits any line item FTE count as existed in the 2008-09 version, but that's true for all departments.
     Lines 2825 and 2830 in the 2009-10 budget for the North Branch and South Branch combined in 2009-10 are budgeted at $405,000 – a 15% decrease from the actual 2007-08 appropriations. Against that must be offset the nearly $30,000 in rental revenue generated by the North Branch.
      The combined branch library expense comes to $13 per household, less than 6 bucks a resident.
     The branch libraries amount to less than 1/2 of 1% of City expenses. They generate over 130,000 patron-visits annually, a utilization that could be increased with some outreach. Their impact on the budget is tiny, and would be so even if they had no value whatsoever -- but clearly they provide value to patrons and to the larger community. I would also estimate that a majority of visitors to the branch libraries combine that trip with other visits to the shopping district, generating sales tax and parking revenue.
     Yet year after year the branches are made the whipping boy for city expenditures, and the threat of their closing used to justify hikes in taxes and/or fees and/or fines.
     It was to stop this regular nonsense that some of us have proposed at least exploring the idea of a separate district. State law specifically allows for such an entity, and in fact hundreds of library districts operate successfully in Illinois.
     As one student researcher concluded, "Independent library districts can return libraries to the center of the community. And in doing so, create stakeholders of the community.  Independent tax districts are an excellent way to restore consistent, stable funding and community services for libraries."
     One regular writer on libraries, opposing the move toward consolidation into larger governmental units, wrote, "Small libraries must allow a truncated staff to do nearly everything, which leads to autonomy for creative thinkers and a very quick separation of effective workers from those who are not. It means unleashing innovation, taking risks, and tapping local civic pride to get support in kind and in dollars from sources other than taxes."
     Special districts can be inefficient -- in fact, the mosquito abatement districts have been singled out as a prime example of that. But the suggestion that fewer governments automatically leads to more efficient government has been studied and refuted. On the contrary, with bigger, consolidated government, “governments become more remote from voters and more accessible to spending interests, which naturally tends to increase expenditures in the longer run.” Government Consolidation in Indiana, Separating Rhetoric from Reality.
     Obviously, there is a question of overhead. But a revenue-sharing or other agreement between a library district and a municipality could deal with that. And, of course, the city budget and taxes would decrease.
     It is not an idea I am wedded to. I would like to investigate how it's working out for towns like Geneva, Franklin Park, and La Grange Park. The economics may or may not work for Evanston. But the advantages of political independence from ritual threat to something the community loves are undeniable.