Cedar Rapids library backers get their signatures

CEDAR RAPIDS - Voters here will get a chance at the Nov. 3 city election to approve or reject a property-tax increase of 27 cents per $1,000 of taxable valuation in the form of a library levy.

On Monday, the Our Library, Our Community campaign members said they will turn in more than enough petition signatures on Tuesday to the City Clerk's Office, which will put the library levy measure on the ballot.

The campaign needed to obtain 2,017 signatures by Sept. 17 to qualify to be on the Nov. 3 election, and it amassed more than 3,300 in three weeks to will beat the Sept. 17 deadline by 17 days.

If approved, the 27-cent levy will raise about $1.6 million a year for the city's downtown library and west-side branch library, according to the city's finance director, Casey Drew. He said the levy will add $23 a year to the property-tax bill of the owner of a $150,000 house.

Library officials said the funds will help to pay operating expenses and to purchase new library materials.

The library operation's current budget is $6.2 million a year, with $1.1 million of the total coming from revenue sources other than city funds.

On Monday, David Tominsky, co-chairman of the Our Library, Our Community campaign, said the campaign's ability to obtain more than enough signatures in less than a month was a tribute to hard work and to 'a ton of support” for the library in the community.

However, he said getting the petition signatures might have been the easy part.

'I don't think that anybody is thinking that the hard work is passed us,” Tominsky said. 'The reality is people need to get out and vote. ... If people who support the library actually vote, I think this thing would go.”

He said the Our Library, Our Community campaign - with the promotional slogan, YES! = SMART - will work to education the community about why a vote for the library levy is important.

For his part, Tominsky, program manager at the Iowa Startup Accelerator, said he is co-chairman of the library campaign because he has come to see how valuable the library is through the experience of his two sons. One is in fourth grade, the other in seventh grade, and both are avid readers and library regulars, he said.

'To me it's deeply personal,” Tominsky said. '(I look) at life through the lens of my boys and what I want them to have and what I think other kids in this community deserve.”