City Budgets and Library Services Feedback Needed!

City Council held a special meeting last week to discuss our FY17 Budget that will begin on July 1, 2016. We will have a budget hearing on March 8, 2016 and vote to approve our budget later that evening. We must submit an approved budget to the state no later than March 15, 2016.

One area we discussed the other night was library services. U-Heights residents are able to get both an Iowa City and a Coralville library card. We pay for library services according to contracts set with both of those community libraries. 

One of the first "political" things I did when my family moved to University Heights in 2005 was participate in the library levy campaign. As a community we voted to enact this levy to help pay for the library services we enjoy. That levy passed with an 88% yes vote. by state law the levy rate is 27 cents per thousand property valuation. 

For next year the Library Levy will generate $18,961 that can only be used for library services. Our assessment from the libraries comes to a total of $47,533. That means $28,000 needs to come from our general fund.


Mayor Wally Heitman would like to know how many people use library services, and which library do they generally use. Could you please email me your thoughts? 

Thanks.

Library Levy

One of the things that all 9 council and mayoral candidates can agree on is the importance of library service to University Heights. UH residents can get a library card from BOTH the Iowa City and the Coralville public libraries. To help pay for our library services the city will be voting to re-authorize our library levy on November 8th.

The library levy rate is set by state statute at 27 cents per thousand valuation. This levy will raise a maximum of approximately $14,000 that can only be used toward library services. The Fiscal Year 2011 levy raised $13,413. The combined assessment for our library services was  $33,176. The remaining $19,763 was paid out of our general fund.