City will use $4.2 million in local-option tax funds for new library

CEDAR RAPIDS - Mayor Ron Corbett told the city's library board late Thursday afternoon that the City Council would direct $4.2 million in revenue from the city's local-option sales tax to help in the purchase of land for the new downtown library.

Corbett noted that the City Council earlier this year picked the most costly of three options for the site of the new library, and he said it only made sense for the council to find funds to cover the additional $4.2 million cost for the purchase of a library site.

The library is slated to be built on the current site of TrueNorth Companies Inc., on Fourth Avenue SE across from Greene Square Park, for which the council has agreed to pay $7.5 million. The Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster funds will cover only the cost of what had been the least-expensive of the three site options, the 700 block of Second Avenue SE. That site would have cost $4 million less than the TrueNorth site, but a council majority decided that the TrueNorth site was the best one for the library and the downtown.

A small piece of land on the TrueNorth block is not owned by TrueNorth and will cost about $200,000 to purchase, the mayor noted.

Doug Elliott, the library board's president, said the board had expected to fund the new library without the assistance of the City Council until the council selected the more expensive site earlier this year. At this point, the board had come to expect that the council might provide some funding help.

“Are we pleased with the magnitude of that assistance, sure,” he said.

Bob Pasicznyuk, the library's director, said the city likely would have had less of a new library if the city had not decided to use local-option sales tax revenue for the property purchase.

“It ends up giving us a better library,” he said.

Corbett explained to the library board that the council's first priority in its use of local-option sales tax revenue has been to acquire and rehabilitate flood-damaged property. The referendum approving the tax in March of 2009 also allowed for the money to be used to match federal funds coming to the city for flood recovery. FEMA funds will pay part of the library construction.

Elliott said he remembered back in 2009 that the library board pushed for a clause in the referendum language that would allow revenue from the local-option sales tax to be used for flood-recovery projects that might include the library.

“Certainly to leave the library board hanging with the responsibility of raising the ‘gap' money for the property purchase wasn't fair,” the mayor said Thursday. “The city made the selection for the TrueNorth site, so it was up to us to come up with the differential. And using the local-option sales tax is a very appropriate use for this project.”

The library's foundation still intends to raise $6 million in private donations for the $45-million library project, with about $1 million of that amount already raised, Elliott said.

Elliott said construction is expected to begin in the fall of 2011 if not sooner, with completion of the new library now slated for early 2013.