Commentary: County residents being asked to build city libraries

Our library board has been working toward a ballot measure which would tax local residents to pay for a bond to improve all 10 library branches.
The Aptos branch would be expanded, the Capitola, Felton, and downtown Santa Cruz branches would be rebuilt, and other branches would catch up on deferred maintenance.
The library service area includes all of Santa Cruz County except Watsonville (which has a separate library system) and has over 200,000 residents. Polling indicates that voters are willing to pay about $50 per parcel per year, and such a tax would finance around $60 million of construction.
Under the current proposal, Santa Cruz, with 30 percent of the population, would get about half of the bond money and Capitola, with 5 percent of the population, would get one-sixth.
Well over half of the population lives in the unincorporated part of the county, which would get one-third. Scotts Valley, with the newest library and 6 percent of the population, would get a sliver.
Santa Cruz boosters argue that since the downtown branch is “central” to the library system, all jurisdictions should pay for it. Capitola boosters say that’s a “regional” library so county residents should contribute to it.
Those arguments might be persuasive if governance and funding of the library were fair. But the City of Santa Cruz controls all aspects of library administration and pays less into the system than the other jurisdictions. The City is conducting the search for a new library director and the library only gets legal advice from the City Attorney.
The three cities approved an agreement to create a Mello-Roos community facilities district including the unincorporated area.
Word is, the Board of Supervisors will consider it on Tuesday, Dec. 9. It takes 150 days to establish a CFD, so it must be done this month to get the parcel tax on the ballot in June.
From the Santa Cruz perspective, we should have a big CFD including the whole library service area, enact a tax and facilities bond, and then maybe renegotiate existing agreements regarding governance and funding.
What’s best for unincorporated residents would be to have equitable governance and funding agreements in place and then a system-wide tax and facilities bond could happen.
The problems are that Santa Cruz has shown little interest in renegotiating agreements which are favorable to it, and Felton residents don’t want to wait any longer for a new library.
The solution is to establish a small CFD composed of just the unincorporated area to improve our branches in that area, including Aptos and Felton. The big CFD plan doesn’t do much for Scotts Valley, which might have many “no” voters, so the tax will be easier to pass if Scotts Valley is omitted.
To vote for a 30-year bond when the current governance and funding agreements are unfair is like taking out a mortgage to buy a house when you’re headed for divorce.
Now is the critical time to tell Supervisors Friend, Leopold, and McPherson to create the small CFD.
– Bruce Holloway has been a resident of San Lorenzo Valley since 1982.