Tonight’s local news aired a piece about property taxes, specifically one woman’s fight to eliminate the only tax, she says, that risks a person’s home if left unpaid. She said that people who can’t pay for food or utilities have to pay their property taxes or risk their home.

She concedes that some things property taxes pay for, like police and fire, are necessary so she’s fine if money for those are collected, but she specifically seems to be angry about paying for a library, which she says she never uses.

When I moved to my little town in 1992 the library here was housed in a historic one room school building, and had been since 1976, with books crowded onto shelves and piled on windowsills. It was a tiny space but it was a library and I was grateful it was there. In 1998 the community approved a .41 millage to build a township building to hold offices and the library. The new library opened in 2002 and operated on that .41 millage until just a year or so ago when we approved an additional .5 millage in support of the library.

I’m pretty proud of our community for passing those millage requests the first time they were put on the ballot.

According to information online the Springfield Township Library serves a community of 14,000 people, has a collection of over 70,000 items and has public internet computers, wi-fi, meeting rooms, interlibrary loan, adult, teen and children’s programming.

I know this is true because I’ve used nearly all of it. And every time I visit the beautiful building with it’s big windows looking out over parkland I’m grateful all over again for our local library.

Still, one part of my brain understands where the woman is coming from. She never uses her library, yet she pays for it. I’ve been thinking about that since the news aired.

So…I wonder…what do you think about being forced to pay for something you don’t use? Should there be a use tax instead? Or some other way to fund things like libraries?

On one hand I get not wanting to pay for something I don’t use. On the other hand…I hope I never have to use the fire department…but I’m still willing to pay for it. And wasn’t there a time, back in the Ben Franklin days, when people paid a fee to have fire department service, and if your house was on fire but you hadn’t paid the fee they let it burn?

Is that the way we want to live now? How much is your library worth to you?

Interesting question.

PS: If you’ve read this far, go read this post, written almost 15 years ago about one night I worked at a public library. Made me smile in remembrance.