Provo is considering a property tax increase to help cover the public library’s $800,000 budget shortfall. The increase would equate to $12 per year for the average homeowner.
The city council passed the proposal 6-1 in an initial vote during an Aug. 13 truth in taxation meeting.
Library director Carla Gordon said they haven’t asked for a tax increase in many years, because they’ve been relying on savings. After they moved into the historic Brigham Young Academy building in 2001, “they raised our taxing ability to the maximum amount, knowing that from the old building to this building, it's a bigger building, we would need more staff, it was going to cost more money.”
But operations didn’t “cost as much money as they had thought it would. And so instead of just spending it for about 10 years, they put all of the excess each year into a savings account.”
With inflation, their costs eventually exceeded what they were bringing in. Instead of raising taxes, Gordon said “the decision was made not to ask for more money, but to dip into the savings account that was extremely healthy.”
Last year the library finally got to a point where they could no longer cover those costs with savings. That’s when they initially asked for a $100,000 tax increase, with plans for incremental increases of $100,000 every year for the next 5 years.
But instead of a small increase this year, they ended up in need of a large one.
Some of their tax revenues other than property tax “decreased by between $200,000-$300,000,” Gordon said. When inflation factored in, the shortfall reached about $800,000.
It also didn’t help that they had to use savings for large building maintenance projects this year, meaning they couldn’t make up for the shortfall there.
They ended up needing to ask for a $450,000 increase. The other $350,000 will be made up through cuts.
There’s already been a “10% decrease on all buying of books and magazines and ebooks and audiobooks,” Gordon said. They also canceled their subscription to music and movie streaming services and shifted funding from an endowment to pay for some building costs.
The property tax increase would prevent the library from needing to cut jobs – and hours – from their services.
During the tax meeting, city councilors remarked on how crowded the chamber was and the hundreds of comments they had received, largely in support. Residents spoke about the library helping with everything from community building to finding a job after experiencing homelessness.
Luke Pryor has lived in Provo for the last 5 years. He spoke about having a long commute that library resources are able to brighten up. “Having an audiobook to listen to during the 30-minute drive is probably the best part of my day.”
Without library access, he adds, going through that many books would be far too expensive.
Councilor Travis Hoban was the only one to say no during the preliminary vote. His hesitation is because “the deficit that the library is running has been kind of a moving target,” referring to the $100,000 tax increase the library already received last year.
Hoban said he would “like to see what we can do as far as annual giving goes, donations, corporate sponsorships.”
While he acknowledges “there isn’t any one silver bullet,” he also wonders if more of the deficit can be chipped away by “increasing certain fees that are more voluntary, such as some of the meeting space rental fees and things like that.”
The proposed increase will be written up and added to the Aug. 20 meeting. An official vote will take place at that time.
