Important mail-in ballot

Among other things

An important mail ballot levy vote will be held July 8-27 asking voters to establish and finance a North Lake County Public Library District. The district will include Polson, Valley View, Big Arm, Elmo,  Dayton, Proctor, Rollins and the East Shore to  Yellow  Bay. The district would require an annual levy of up to 11.14 mils. No city, county or school tax money would be required. A small state contribution would continue. At the present mil level this would raise a total of $448,287. If the mil value increases, fewer mils would be needed.

The levy issue is important because the Polson public library is used by so many area residents – for borrowing books, tapes and videos; for access to research materials; to take advantage of an inter-library program to obtain books not in the local library’s inventory; availability of computers used by an average of 300 students and adults each week and a variety of online services that can be accessed at the library and from home computers.

Presently, the average number of users of library facilities is more than 925 persons each week – about 48,000 annually. Some 61 percent of registered users of the library reside outside of Polson. Thus a sharing of costs on a reasonable basis appears fair to all.

Since 1992, the Polson Public Library has spent an average of $15,000 per year on books and other collection materials, all provided by donations. Average annual cost of books and material for other libraries in areas of our population size is $30,000. Levy funds would also be used for salaries, operation and maintenance.

Cost to property owners? On homes with a taxable value of $1,194 the annual cost would be $13.30; for taxable value homes of $2,475, cost would be $27.57, and for homes with taxable value of $3,755, the cost would be $41.83.

Examples: Homes with a market value of $100,000, the cost would be $20.60, and for $200,000 homes, $41.20 per year. Breaking it down to a cost per day basis, it’s quite reasonable.

Complete details of the proposed district and budget can be obtained on the library’s website at www.polsonpubliclibrary.org/  Check it out for full information. On the page click on “proposed district,” then at the right are several links with all the specifications.

I’m going to vote for the North Lake County Public Library District and levy. I hope you consider doing so, too.

For more information, call or e-mail Bonnie Triepke, 883-9271, bonniepolson@aol.com; Jake Block at 883-2541; or Nadine Clayton at 883-2909 or madome@daytonassoc.com.