Walter Greenspan writes:
.
>
> There are basically four major self-governing special taxing districts:
> school, library, fire and water; but, there can be others as well, such as
> police, park, refuse & garbage, etc., etc.  Bear in mind that not all
> library, fire and water districts are self-governing.  Actually, each of
> these areas -- library, fire and water -- deserves its own eMail because of
> the several different types of governmental organization allowed under New
> York State law.
>
Walter et al,
As a librarian, I definitely agree that public libraries deserve their own
eMail. So...
There are four types of public libraries in NYS. That is, the NYS Education
Department grants four types of charters: association (a group of folks
form a library - they won't grant any more of these), municipal (a town,
city, village, or combination thereof sponsor and fund the library through
an item in the municipal budget), 'public' (a library serves a municipal
area and a tax rate is levied to directly support that service), and a
school district public library. This last one is really like the third one
except that the area served is a school district. It has nothing else to do
with schools except that the tax is collected by the school tax collector
as a separate rate shown on the school tax bill. The State is trying to
convince all/most public libraries in the state to move to this type of
charter. It has several advantages including a larger tax base since most
school districts cover more than one town/village, the library isn't
dependent on the annual show of good will by a town/city/village board to
allocate money (municipal library), voters are much more likely to approve
money to support libraries that boards, and once the voters approve a
budget (authorize a certain amount of money to be collected as a property
tax) that becomes the floor amount of funding. The expenditure for the
library can be raised, but not lowered (unless the Library Board decides to
do that). Since State funding for public libraries is always a tricky
issue, local library reliance on the property tax, however regressive that
may be, is the surest way to insure at least a basic level of service.

Wayne Miller