School Board executive committee tables library district talk until June

The St. Landry Parish School Board’s Executive Committee on Monday put off until June any consideration of board support for a parish-wide library district.
The delay isn’t necessarily opposition to the proposal. Instead it’s a matter of timing.
The board has vital tax renewals on the May 3 ballot, and committee members don’t want to do anything to create a spark of anti- sentiment among the citizenry.
As Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau once said, the essential ingredient of politics is timing, and board members believe now is not the time to take on the library proposition.
Library Coalition co-chairs Bruce Gaudin and Ginger Lecompte appeared at Monday’s committee meeting to seek support for a resolution endorsing the proposed district.
Board member Harry Fruge of Eunice said, “We all understand the need for libraries, but perception is reality. And that reality now is the perception if we adopt this resolution that the School Board favors a library tax proposition.”
He noted that that could possibly generate a backlash which would adversely impact the board’s tax renewals, which represent $9 million of precious local property tax revenue as well as $5 million in matching state Minimum Foundation Program funding.
How a parish-wide, or portions of the parish, library system would be financed at this point is undetermined. Though a property tax has been used to develop funding examples, the actual proposal would be made by a Library District board of five to seven members appointed by the parish council, which has not yet taken the measure up.
That lack of action was another point raised by Fruge on Monday.
“I wonder why we are hearing this. You withdrew the motion at the parish council last week. It seems a mute question (until the council acts). Are we going to be embroiled in this when we are just week away from a tax renewal. It could become a point of contention with voters,” he said.
He, along with other board members, also wondered if there is some option other than a property tax to finance a library system, a question that has also been raised by some parish council members.
Gaudin said that while 60 parishes fund their system with property tax revenue that is not necessarily how St. Landry might structure its financing, noting that any such proposal would come from the to-be-created district’s board, not from the coalition.
Lecompte also noted the proposed district’s board would decide which way to propose funding the system. “We not asking you to approve a tax issue, we’re asking for support for the proposed district and the concept,” she said.
Committee member Anthony Standberry said he thought the public perception is that the coalition is proposing a tax, regardless of what the resolution of support says.
“I’m 100 percent for education and libraries, but this is not a good time,” he said before moving to table the matter until June.
Chairman and board president Josie Frank, who represents a portion of Eunice, said “the tax renewal is very important to us. I can’t imagine we would be against a library system, but we have to have this renewal.”
Board member Donnie Perron asked Gaudin what ballot the library district proposal would be on and Gaudin replied there is time enough to get it on the November primary or December runoff ballots but that most likely it would not be until sometime in 2015.
Perron said that considering that schedule it seemed it could wait until after the board’s renewal election in May.
Gaudin noted that the coalition had been asked last year by the council to wait until after its eventually successful road district tax election and now was being asked to wait until after the board’s tax election. But he noted, “If it takes a table to get your support we probably can live with that.”