Library system weighs asking for millage increase.

The Central Arkansas Library System is considering asking voters in Little Rock to approve a millage rate increase to bring in more revenue and cover operating costs, according to system executive director Nate Coulter.

In a recent director’s report, Coulter told library board members that voter approval of the property-tax increase would need to occur no later than October or the library to benefit from the increased operating revenue in 2022.

In an interview, Coulter described the discussions as “very preliminary.” He said the issue was a long-term one, with no specific time frame, based on costs associated with electronic materials and a shift away from using capital improvement bond revenue.

Cost savings brought about by a decision to furlough employees amid the covid-19 outbreak in 2020 meant planned discussions of a rate increase were carried forward from last year into 2021, Coulter said.

Coulter said he did not know if the discussions would lead to a referendum in the current calendar year or the next.

The library system has an existing ballot question committee, and the committee “will probably get engaged sometime this year,” Coulter said Thursday in a phone interview.

Nevertheless, beyond talking to the board broadly about the issue and trying to engage with the library’s ballot and advocacy committees, Coulter said that “very little concrete steps have been taken to consider.”

He added, “And we might wind up again this year finishing in such a strong position that it wouldn’t be urgent or wouldn’t be something we had to consider.”

In a director’s report prepared for the library system’s board meeting late last month, Coulter wrote that he had recently met with Mayor Frank Scott Jr. and discussed the millage rate increase.

“I emphasized to Mayor Scott that if Little Rock voters favored CALS with a slight increase in the tax dedicated to operations, this vote would need to occur no later than early October 2021 to enable the library to receive the benefit of additional operating revenues in 2022,” Coulter wrote. “The mayor expressed a willingness to work with us should CALS decide to petition the City Board to refer a library millage to the voters in the second half of 2021.”

For a number of years, Coulter explained Thursday, the library was using capital improvement bond revenue “to help plug a hole in the materials budget” — the money the library spends to purchase books and downloadable items that are then circulated among residents.

The library spends about $2 million a year on materials, Coulter said.

The board of directors for the library system several years ago indicated a preference for moving away from a reliance on capital improvement funds to finance part of the collection budget in favor of using operating revenue to fund the budget in its entirety.

Additionally, pressure on the pricing model for e-books is more favorable to publishers, Coulter said, explaining that the popularity of e-books and audiobooks has grown every year. He called it “a significantly more expensive proposition.”

As opposed to the circulation of a physical book, which the library purchases and can be loaned out any number of times until the book falls apart, for electronic materials the library gets a license from the digital publishers to loan the e-book, he said.

Every time the e-book is downloaded, “the meter clicks,” Coulter said.

A favorable revenue collection this year might enable the library to get by on operating revenue, he said, but the picture will not become clearer until later in the year.

Coulter suggested that the state of property tax collections may weigh heavily on the question of a rate increase. In April, the library will “have a pretty good indication” of what 2020 property tax revenues will look like, Coulter said.

The library’s board of directors would have to petition the Little Rock Board of Directors to hold an election to increase the millage rate from property taxes.

Securing approval from Little Rock voters for a millage rate increase for the library system in 2021 or 2022 would be the first such increase for the library in more than a decade.

According to Coulter, the last time Little Rock voters approved an increase for the library was 2007. At that time, voters approved an increase of 0.5 mills, from 2.8 to 3.3 mills. They also added 0.1 mills to the library’s capital improvement levy.

In an email following the interview, Coulter suggested that although it is “very early in the library’s efforts to project the cost of delivering future services at CALS, I am very confident that any request to raise the operational millage in 2021 or 2022 would be below that total amount considered in 2007 (0.6 mills).”