Libraries were overdue for city's help
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Mt. Lebanon annually devotes about $37 in local taxes per resident to its library.
That number for the city of Pittsburgh this year was 13 cents. Tuesday's landslide vote means the city finally will put serious money where its books are.
Some 72 percent of city voters said "yes" to devoting a thin slice of property taxes to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and I don't think many thought too long about it. The vote was more like that final scene in "It's a Wonderful Life," where the townspeople just show up at George Bailey's house to drop donations on the table.
We heard you were in trouble. What can we do? That attitude has been evident since the library board's October 2009 announcement that it intended to close five of the 19 branches. The citizenry rose like the rowdiest book club in the history of Western civilization and essentially said, guess again.
For more than a decade, residents of Pittsburgh have watched schools, pools, fire stations, recreation centers and bridges close as the city "right-sized" itself, to use that cold bureaucratic term. We've mostly seen the need, too, and the payoff is that the property tax rate hasn't risen in Pittsburgh for 10 years. That makes the city the only district in Allegheny County where the millage rates for the municipality and schools are the same as in 2001.
So, faced with the question of a quarter-mill rate increase for libraries ($25 per $100,000 of assessed property value), it didn't seem much to ask. Only fantasists believed a multimillion-dollar funding gap could be filled with voluntary contributions and bake sales. That's not to suggest that many fully realized just how out of sync with the regional norm the city has been by funding its neighborhood branches on the cheap.
The new tax is expected to raise roughly $3.2 million for libraries next year, a considerable jump from the city's current $40,000 contribution. That latter number is less than small suburbs such as Bellevue, Crafton and Dormont devote to their libraries; more than 20 communities in the county devote at least three times what the city has been giving.
First Published November 10, 2011 12:00 am
