Voting to approve a property tax lid lift for the Kitsap Rural Library District this November might be easier to do if South Kitsap voters could be reasonably certain it would result in a new library being built for Port Orchard.
It would make little sense for us to vote yes on a proposed tax increase that would guarantee new library buildings for Silverdale and Kingston but not for Port Orchard.
South Kitsap residents who depend on the Kitsap Regional Library branch in Port Orchard will be paying the higher property tax if the lid lift is approved.
Since the KRL administration has chosen to build in Kingston and Silverdale first and provide more than 90 percent of the funds needed for those new libraries, too little of the lid lift revenue is left to do the same for Port Orchard before 2018.
If the city of Port Orchard can find the funds needed to build its planned complex consisting of a new library, parking garage, and retail space on Prospect Street by 2014, KRL offers to contribute only $3 million for the library.
KRL would not have the ability to pay more than this $3 million and also pay for the new libraries in Silverdale and Kingston.
Maybe the city can come up with additional funding and get started by 2014 so that the lid lift revenue from KRL would provide less than half the cost of the new library.
It may be irksome to know that Silverdale and Kingston would get the lion’s share of the lid lift revenue in this scenario, but at least South Kitsap would have a new library as part of the city’s new complex.
If our objective is a new library, the irritation from knowing that folks in the Silverdale and Kingston areas stole a march on us when KRL plans were being made is something we just have to live with.
Of course, the mayor and city council of Port Orchard still need to show us that the funding needed for their complex can probably be obtained by about 2014.
Without reasonable assurance that their complex can be funded, South Kitsap voters would have little more than hope as the basis for a “yes” vote on the lid lift.
Suppose the city cannot find the additional funding, so that there is no reason for KRL to contribute the $3 million in 2014. Then what?
KRL’s administration recently offered an alternative scenario in which the lid lift revenue may provide funding for a new branch library in Port Orchard.
Projected revenue and expenditures over the 10 years after a lid lift is approved indicate that KRL could build a new library in Port Orchard by about 2020.
Design work could begin by 2018, and construction could begin as early as 2019 in this alternative scenario.
Naturally, projecting revenue and costs out over a 10-year period results in some uncertainties, but it seems likely that KRL could afford to do in Port Orchard what would be done in Silverdale and Kingston if the lid lift is approved.
Being third in line for a new library building means we won’t see ours before 2020, but other than the longer wait South Kitsap would be treated much the same as the others.
And being third in line means we have to take the risk that the future doesn’t match the projections, so that we end up in the same situation in 2020 as we would be in 2014 — needing to find more funding.
In a few weeks the general election ballots will arrive in the mail, so time is drawing short for the city and KRL to show the voters in South Kitsap that a “yes” vote gets us what we want — a new library.
The extra $2 or $3 per month we would pay in property taxes may cause many to vote “no” in these bad economic times, but the lack of assurance that our taxes would provide us a new library could make almost anyone reject the lid lift.
Bob Meadows is a Port Orchard resident.
