Barbara Lewis: Measure S perpetuates a bad system for funding libraries

Sustainability: one reason to vote No on Measure S. Those of us who love the library want long-term, consistent, sustainable funding for our library system. We therefore need a dedicated source of funding that isn’t based on begging the taxpayers every few years. There’s too much uncertainty when funding is considered “soft money,” or money that isn’t written into anyone’s budget. Now that cities and the county are no longer in the red, we need to end this tax and force our cities and county to again create line items in their budgets for our library system. If the libraries are important, funding should be a budgeted line item – especially for the county with its budget of over 1.1 billion of our dollars.

Another reason to vote No on Measure S is that we currently pay sales taxes that go to the cities and county. Why are we being asked to pay yet again to these entities? They’re double dipping.

The original 1/8th cent tax was implemented in 1999. Hasn’t the library system had long enough to figure out how to get their funding returned to the city and county budgets where it should be?

This story was originally published October 13, 2017 at 12:04 PM with the headline "Barbara Lewis: Measure S perpetuates a bad system for funding libraries."