Residents had questions about rising property taxes and children’s safety during the first of several public hearings about a new library branch planned in the New Whiteland area.
The library’s board of trustees is conducting four public hearings to get feedback from the community about a planned relocation of the cramped and outdated Clark-Pleasant branch, a new White River branch and future renovation of the Franklin branch. The library board did not vote on the projects during the public hearing on Tuesday night. They will cast votes on the Clark-Pleasant branch during a public meeting on Jan. 15.
The county library system wants to build an $8.8 million branch to replace the current branch on Tracy Road, which has been housed in a 10,000 square foot office building in the same parking lot as the town’s police department since 2002.
The new facility would be nearly double the size, but would still be the smallest of the branches in Clark-Pleasant, Trafalgar, Franklin and White River and would sit on a 3-acre lot which hasn’t been located or purchased yet. It would also include a new learning lab and teen and early childhood learning centers, neither of which the Clark-Pleasant branch has now, and 60 more parking spaces.
The library would pay for about 16 percent of the project with money that it has in savings, but would need to raise property taxes for everyone in the library district — including those in Trafalgar, Franklin and White River — to pay for the projects being considered.
Residents in those districts do not get to vote on whether their property taxes are raised because state law does not require a referendum unless a project is more than $15 million, and the library isn’t grouping the three projects together, even though they will continue to use the additional money from those taxes for future projects.
A new Clark-Pleasant branch is needed to keep up with the community’s rapidly growing population, library leaders said. New Whiteland has grown by more than 32 percent in the last decade.
About a dozen residents attended the public hearing, but only two spoke.
One man who lives near the current Clark-Pleasant branch was angry that his property taxes would go up again, and was concerned that moving the library to U.S. 31, which is what’s being proposed, would pose a safety risk for kids going to and from the library on their own.
“I use that library quite often. I’m not saying it doesn’t need updated. That’s fine. But where it’s at right now is pretty good for kids on bicycles and stuff,” said Mark Walls, who lives near the library. “I don’t have any little kids anymore. My kids are grown, but I would want them to stay as far away from highway 31 as possible, especially if they’re on bicycles, because that’s a dangerous road out there.”
He said several neighborhoods surround the current location, making it easily accessible to those residents and their children. But Library Director Lisa Lintner said it needs to be in a more visible spot — somewhere along U.S. 31 between Tracy and Whiteland Roads.
“Even though it is on Tracy Road, we constantly get people who do not know that there is a library there,” Lintner said. “They come in pretty much every day and say, ‘Hey, I’ve lived in New Whiteland for three years and I didn’t know there was a library here.’”
Walls also raised concerns about his rising property taxes, which just went up due to the Clark-Pleasant schools referendum. This would raise them again, by about 2.5 cents for every $100 of assessed value. The owner of a home worth $146,600 — the median price in this area — would pay about $15.76 more in property taxes per year.
That additional tax would not be dropped from a homeowner’s bill once the new Clark-Pleasant branch is complete. The library system hopes to continue capturing those funds for future projects as well, including a new White River branch and a renovation of the Franklin branch, Lintner said.
Angela DeVoss is fine with the increase in property taxes, she said.
“It looks like basically we’re talking about the cost of one brand new book a year per family. I think that’s reasonable because we’re able to check out hundreds of books each year for what it would cost me to buy just one,” DeVoss said.
“To me, it’s so much more cost effective to pay the extra $15 (a year) and have the library expanded than have to buy a bunch of books.”
DeVoss home-schools her five kids, and uses the county’s libraries often, she said. She is in favor of the new library because it would include more and different types of spaces for her kids, who range in age from toddler to teen.
“We’d like to have the little kid areas where they can play and maybe be a little extra noisy, and then my teenager really prefers the quieter areas,” she said.
Her family checks out tons of books from the library for the children and their lesson plans. They also take advantage of several of the library programs that are offered, she said.
“My children have been able to be exposed to STEM activities and robots that otherwise they probably wouldn’t be able to,” DeVoss said. “We use the library a lot because, since they don’t go to school where they’re exposed to certain things, I still want them to be exposed to a lot of those things and the library is a great avenue to do that. So expanding would be really great.”
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Here is a look at the impact the proposed library projects would have on property taxes for home and business owners in the library district:
$75,000 home; $4.13 increase per year
$100,000 home; $8.19 increase per year
$175,000 home; $20.38 increase per year
$250,000 home; $32.56 increase per year
1 acre of land; 40 cents increase per year
100 acres of land; $40.25 increase per year
$100,000 commercial property rental; $25 increase per year
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Johnson County residents have three more opportunities to ask questions or voice their concerns about the proposed library projects:
2 p.m. Jan. 10, Clark-Pleasant branch, 530 Tracy Road, New Whiteland;
10 a.m. Jan. 12 (a Saturday), Clark-Pleasant branch;
6 p.m. Jan. 15, Franklin branch, 401 State Street, Franklin
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