New library caught in cash crunch

Jeffrey Libby

Thursday, July 25, 2002 | 11 a.m.

Even as Joan Kerschner moved furniture this week, watching work crews install bookstacks for Henderson's first free-standing library in 13 years, she had to acknowledge a predicament.

"This won't happen again. The money we've been saving will all go to running this facility," said Kerschner, director of the Henderson Library District. "So we're dead in the water until we pass a bond issue."

The Aug. 24 opening of the $6.6 million Paseo Verde Library, southeast of Green Valley Parkway and Interstate 215, comes at a difficult time for the city's library district.

Because of a lack of funding, the library will open with just a third of its shelves filled with books. Computers and other equipment will be in short supply, and the cost of running the library will eat up funds the district had hoped to put aside for additional libraries.

The library's opening is putting a spotlight on the district's financial state, and the hope district officials have for a bond measure in November. The library district, which has the second worst ratio of books per person in the state, has the lowest tax rate in the Las Vegas Valley.

"The bad news is, this district has always been underfunded," said Ann Barron, president of Friends of Henderson Public Library District, a 500-member nonprofit group. "Historically, we've never had enough money for capital projects.

"We need this tax so we can have libraries that are consistent with the other facilities the city prides itself on having."

The city's first library since the James I. Gibson Library opened downtown in 1989, the Paseo Verde Library will be the most high-tech public library in the state, Kerschner said, with videoconferencing capabilities and Internet hookups throughout the library stacks. It will also house the first public genealogy collection in the state, staffed by volunteers from the Nevada Genealogical Society.

But the costs of running the 42,000-square-foot facility, along with two small storefront libraries and the James I. Gibson, will eat up all available funds, Kerschner said. After six years of saving, there is success, and also an apparent dead end.

In future years, there will be little left over to buy new books, which means that even with the opening of Paseo Verde, Henderson will remain the second worst city in the state in books per person, at an average of about 1.1. Only North Las Vegas has less.

The Paseo Verde Library, designed to hold 250,000 books, will open with just 85,000 volumes. Of those, just 35,000 will be new books. The other 50,000 will be trucked over from the James I. Gibson and one of the storefronts, the Lydia Malcolm Library.

By comparison, the Washoe County Library System, which includes the city of Reno, has 12 libraries and 2.4 books per person, slightly higher than the state average of 2.02 books per person.

Unlike the Henderson Library District, which is independent and relies almost entirely on property taxes for $3 million in funding each year, the Washoe County Library System operates with a $9 million annual budget funded by the county to serve 325,000 residents.

The Washoe library system also receives some property tax revenues. And in 2000, voters passed a $10 million bond that will build two new libraries by 2004. They will be the first new free-standing public libraries built in 37 years there, said Nancy Cummings, Washoe County Library director.

The Henderson Library District wants to build and stock six libraries throughout the city.

So in November, the Henderson Library District will ask voters to approve a tax initiative that would raise the annual payments for the owner of a $150,000 home from $26 to $47, still a cheaper rate than Clark County, Las Vegas or Boulder City. The 30-year tax would raise $80 million.

Last June voters soundly rejected the same initiative.

The James I. Gibson Library, the district's only other free-standing library, was built without capital funds, Barron said. In 1989, the district won matching state funds through a complicated lease of city land.

That library and the two storefront libraries provide programs for seniors, storytelling for preschool children, English classes for adults, recorded books and other educational materials. The libraries also provide necessary support for schools, said Janet Dobry, principal of Robert L. Taylor Elementary School, one of the poorest in the city.

Since 1989, when the Gibson library opened, the Clark County School District has built 23 schools in the city.

"Believe it or not, a lot of kids don't have access to books and other materials at home," Dobry said. "A public library opens up the world to them."