Facts about countywide library issue

Some people move to this area, and after visiting our library for the first time, ask us, “Why don’t you have a county library?”

In case you haven’t heard, Nodaway County voters living outside of the Maryville city limits will be asked to approve funding for a county library district on the April 7 ballot.

The property tax rate associated with the new county library district is 15 cents per $100 assessed valuation.

For a county resident owning a home with a market value of $100,000 — which would be assessed at 19 percent, or $19,000 — the annual library tax for that property would be $28.50.

This rate is slightly lower than what Maryville residents are currently paying.

If passed, Maryville property owners would not see a tax increase since they are already supporting the library with their property taxes, but would instead see a very slight decrease, because their rates would need to match what we’re asking county residents to pay.

Why are we doing this?

1. Around half of Nodaway County residents live outside of Maryville city limits. They have never been included in a public library service district.

Currently, they are not eligible to serve on the library board, and they are required to pay an annual $25 fee to borrow materials from the library.

2. We’ve found that there are a good number of county residents who are not happy about reason No. 1. They feel left out, which is understandable.

But, much like a public school, a library is dependent upon local property taxes for the majority of its funding.

Therefore, like a public school, our priority is to serve households that are paying property taxes to support us.

Our April 7 ballot proposition is an invitation for county residents living outside of Maryville city limits to join those living inside Maryville city limits in funding a merged city-county library that could give all county residents — including kids — equal status regarding library service.

3. County residents use the library regularly. We are in another year of record library use, and county residents living outside of Maryville have been a part of that growth.

At least 43 percent of our kids in last year’s Summer Reading Program live outside of city limits.

In-house surveys indicate that around a third of patrons using our computers, printers, wireless Internet, free test proctoring service, community room rental, and other services, are from outside of city limits.

4. Although we’re happy that nonresidents are using the library, many of them tell us they want a full county library that provides more outreach, books and programs — particularly to kids in the K-5th-grade range.

We’ve come up with a plan that would use the funding provided by county residents to offer free library accounts for every child in the county.

Nonresident fees would be abolished for county residents.

The plan also calls for more books, services, and programming for all ages.

County residents outside of city limits could serve on the library board to represent their town.

I’ll discuss our plan in next month’s column, but if you’d like to learn more now, call me at 660-582-5281 or email me at [email protected] .

You can also follow the library on Facebook, and we have library board members sending out information on Twitter and Instagram.