Tonight the City of Liberty Lake City Council is poised to take advantage of a quirk in seating timing following the November election to ram through a controversial ordinance giving itself veto power over the Library Board (See below).
After a lengthy discussion at the last city council meeting, with one of the major sticking points being whether the nearly 25% of property taxes that fund the library should be pulled from the $3 million pool prior to sending $1 million out to the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district the city shares with Spokane Valley, or a proposal to instead pull it from the $2 million in property taxes leftover after the money is sent to the TIF, effectively slashing the library’s budget by a significant amount.
Let’s reword and unpack that. (Note: I’m working here on interpreting what Erin and Alyssa wrote and in response to a rumor that alarm bells are going off in some quarters.) If I understand correctly, there is a pool of 3 million dollars in property taxes. The standard allocation has been for the Liberty Lake Library to receive 25% of that pool, which, in this case would be $750,000 (i.e. 1/4 of 3 million). However, there is another annual line item of a million dollars, the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district, that, in prior years, has come out of some other place in the budget. At tonight’s council meeting there is a proposal to take the million dollars out of the 3 million dollar property tax pool BEFORE awarding 25% of the REMAINDER in the pool to the Library, that is, 1/4 of 2 million or $500,000. That would be a reduction of the funds to the Library of $250,000 or, differently put, a reduction in funding (from this source) by a third. That is real money.
Knowing no better at this moment, that budgetary proposal reeks of someone’s subtle way to punish the Liberty Lake Library and the Library Board for daring to challenge some members of the City Council’s efforts to dictate Library policy.
Below I’ve copied Petra Hoy’s Be the Change 509 email where it pertains to the Liberty Lake City Council.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
From Be the Change 509:
PLEASE JOIN US AT THE NEXT LIBERTY LAKE CITY COUNCIL MEETING Tuesday December 5, 7:00 PM.
HELD REMOTELY & IN PERSON AT CITY HALL 22710 E COUNTRY VISTA DRIVE LIBERTY LAKE WA 99019
PUBLIC COMMENT If you wish to provide oral public comments during the Council meeting, you may do so in person at City Hall or virtually via zoom. If you wish to speak in-person, please fill out a yellow Request to Speak Form.
If you wish to speak via zoom, please join the zoom meeting using the meeting information above. The Mayor will invite public comments during the appropriate section of the agenda, at which time you can send a request to speak to our meeting host using the chat function within the zoom meeting.
WRITTEN PUBLIC COMMENTS If you wish to provide written public comments for the council meeting, please email your comments to khardy@libertylakewa.gov by 4:00 p.m. the day of the council meeting and include all the following information with your comments: 1. The Meeting Date 2. Your First and Last Name 3. If you are a Liberty Lake resident 4. The Agenda Item(s) which you are speaking about *Note – If providing written comments, the comments received will be acknowledged during the public meeting, but not read. All written comments received by 4:00 p.m. will be provided to the mayor and city council members in advance of the meeting.
ZOOM MEETING To view the meeting live via Zoom Meeting, join the Zoom web meeting: Meeting Instructions: