By Dave Anderson:
A shocking event happened in Pittsburgh last night. Its citizens decided that they actually wanted to pay for public services. A special tax levy of $25 per $100,000 of taxable property was passed in order to partially fund the library system.
The Post Gazette has details:
By a margin of more than two to one, Pittsburgh voters Tuesday approved a binding referendum to add 0.25 mills to the tax on all real estate in the city, and steer the proceeds to the fiscally challenged Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. The levy could bring more than $3 million a year to the library system for operations and maintenance.
In 2009, the Carnegie Library administration decided that branches...should be closed,... merged... and moved. Administrators said declining population, cuts in public funding, inflation.... Stopgap funding from the city and state forestalled the moves. The referendum drive sprang from that crisis.
That is almost un-American, being willing to pay for public services that are available to everyone including people like me, non-residents who are fairly heavy library users.
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ReplyDeleteThanks. Good news is in short supply. I like the symbolism, too. Warren Buffet seems to be cut from the same fabric as Andrew Carnegie.
ReplyDeleteThere are Carnegie libraries all over the country. We have one in Atlanta. I read somewhere that when he donated a library to a town he leveraged his "investment." He paid for the land and building, but not until the local civic authorities first agreed to furnish the books, maintenance and staff. That was a sweet deal for any city or town wanting a library.