Do you have questions?
We have answers.
Weather permitting, we hope to have our Open House which will be your chance to learn about YOUR new library project and the annexation referendum and what it means and how it will affect you.
- UPDATE- The Open House will be online tonight on Facebook Live.
Visit https://www.facebook.com/MillstadtLibrary/
If the weather doesn’t go well, we’ll be online and host an open Q&A on Facebook Live at 7 p.m.
We are still hearing LOTS of rumors that the Village of Millstadt directly funds the Millstadt Library.
It doesn’t and it NEVER HAS.
- There are 3 kinds of libraries, City, Village and District – each are funded and ran differently
- City libraries are the only ones ran completely by their municipality, meaning all money goes through the city, library staff is employed by the city and so on.
- The Millstadt Library started as a Village Library, meaning that we were always separately ran and funded through St. Clair County, except, that we would levy (in simple terms, ask for what we would budget yearly) through the Village along with some other governmental tasks
- As a District Library, we now will be directly funded by St. Clair County, do all of our own governmental tasks and have the ability to expand our service area to serve more people
- There really is no such thing as a free library (unless you mean the little ones that house donated books or the few volunteer libraries left in existence) – Almost every library must charge taxes to support services, collections, general operating expenses and more (Take a look at your current tax bill or a tax bill of where you previously lived, you might be surprised.)
- Librarians are a lot like teachers – they tend to spend their own money and time off the clock to support events and programs because budgets are too small and they’d rather give of themselves then not offer something for others (we’re pretty guilty of this)
We offer Non-Resident Cards and yes, they are $95 a year, and yes, we understand that is a lot of money.
- On our website, http://www.millstadt-library.org/non-resident-card , we have all of the information and reasoning behind our NR cards explained.
- $95 is the average amount that everyone in town pays for their card every year, whether they use it or not and is about the same amount we’d be asking those to be annexed to pay each year.
- Anyone who pays for about 3 or so books, pays for one streaming subscription service or some DVDs, has usually already more than paid for one year of library services in their taxes.
Please come by and we’ll look at your tax bill with you.
- It’s come to our attention that some people just don’t know what they actually pay on their taxes, and that’s OKAY. We get it, you have to pay for them, what does it matter what they are?
- We will print out your tax bill and go line by line with you.
- THEN, we can actually get an estimate of what you might pay for the library in taxes because what the value of your house is doesn’t mean that is actually what your taxes are based off of. Confusing, right?
Interested in how you can help with the annexation?
- We'd love to get you in contact with our Yes Committee so you can help volunteer to help spread the word about the annexation.
- Also, just please spread the word - about your new library, your current library, and the annexation and why all of these things are so important for you, your neighbors and your community.
Any and all questions you have, we’re here to answer them. And if we don’t know the answer? We’ll find it. After all, we’re a library. It’s our job to know.
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