Kevin Deegan-Krause Explains the Ferndale Library Millage
(Guest View: Kevin Deegan-Krause, July 28, 2016)
Ferndale, MI – I’ve had the honor in the past of serving on the library board and seeing the library grow and prosper and while I’m no longer on the board, a few people have asked me to explain the library millage and I realized I didn’t know enough myself.
I agree with those who say that “taxes are the price of civilization” but I also think we should be very careful to increase anybody’s tax burden without good reasons and evidence of benefit to the community as a whole.
So I dove into the numbers to educate myself and form my own opinion, and I what I found was persuasive enough that I joined the Yes Ferndale Library group and have been working on the campaign, and I thought I would ask oc115 if could share my opinion here. I think the library millage, while a significant increase, is a good investment in the community that first returns us to a level that the community supported a decade ago and then makes a reasonable increase to meet rising demand on library services.
How did I come to this conclusion? The answer to this question has two parts and both of them are important.
FIRST, the library needs a 0.7 mill increase just to keep the funding level that voters approved overwhelmingly in 2007. This is because a mill is not worth as much as it used to be.
The reason for this is an ugly combination of math, economics and state law, but to put it in simplest terms, the Headlee amendment to Michigan’s constitution resets taxes to lower levels because Headlee lets tax revenue fall as fast and far as home values do (like they did after 2007) but rise only as fast as inflation. In 2007 Ferndale’s voters overwhelmingly approved 2 mills for the library. In today’s dollars that would mean that our community paid $1,370,000 for the library. But because of Headlee, the community today pays only $1,020,000. That’s a 26% drop. So even though it might not feel like it—and we have all gone through a lot of economic squeezing in the past decade—and even though our housing values have returned to 2007 levels, we are paying significantly less in library taxes overall and the library has less funding. Because mills are worth less, the library would need about 2.7 mills just to get back to 2007 levels.
But that still leaves 0.8 mills. Why does the library need that? This brings us to a second point.
SECOND, the library needs an additional 0.8 mill increase to keep up with increased demand. This has several parts. First, the demands on library resources are greater than they were even 5 years ago. According to library statistics, the number of people coming through the doors doubled between 2011 and 2015 (we don’t have full results for 2016 but the trends are similar) and the number per hour is up over 250%. The same increase is apparent in every use statistic, from check-outs per hour (+160%) to reference questions per hour (+230%) to internet sessions per hour (+360%) to program attendance (+380%). The library’s transformation, begun in the mid-2000’s has been a resounding success, but this has put strain on the existing system that requires additional funding and it has prevented the library from offering cost-of-living increases from its excellent staff members.
The library has also experienced demand for new services including not only the restoration of Friday hours but also the addition of new weekend hours, including extended Saturday opening and Sunday hours as well. The most recent survey of library users also indicated a significant demand for new online services additional programs, especially educational programs for children, and for new online ways of distributing content including more Overdrive (ebooks and audiobooks), Mango language-learning, and Novelist reader recommendations.
Meeting the needs of the community costs money, but the investment is a good one. The research is clear: strong libraries anchor communities, improve education and raise property values. The investment is also not as large as it looks. The ballot language uses the number 3.5 mills, but more than half of this is renewing the existing millage, and much of the rest merely brings our tax contribution to the library back to the 2007 levels that voters strongly supported. The actual increase over 2007 is only 0.8 mills, about 30%, and that will allow the library to catch up with the ever-growing demand and provide our citizens the library services that they seek.
Kevin Deegan-Krause is a political science professor at Wayne State University and former Library Board Member. He is a regular contributor to oc115 because of his expertise in data-gathering and analysis.
For more on the Ferndale Area District Library Millage go to https://oaklandcounty115.com/2016/05/19/ferndale-library-asking-for-millage-increase-on-aug-2/.
For other election information go to https://oaklandcounty115.com/2016/07/18/2016-candidate-interviews-ballot-issues-frequently-updated-2/.