I agree with this editorial. Libraries should be funded from general revenues and not left to the whims of the electorate.
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A SEVEN-YEAR Seattle Library Levy is the wrong way to pay for an essential day-to-day service.
Free public libraries are an essential service. They are about reading, which is about education, personal achievement, and democracy. Because libraries are such good things, they should not be offered up to voters in politically constructed take-it-or-leave-it choices.
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This current levy proposal is mostly for libraries' day-to-day expenses, and these are neither optional nor one-time. They are essential and ongoing. They should be paid from general taxes, the same as police and fire services.
Funding library operations through levies opens the door to an egregious type of cost shifting. Libraries already have money going to them. If the voters add new money, the City Council can take out some of the old money and spend it on something else. In fact, it plans to do that. The levy would raise $17 million next year, but $5 million of it would replace money diverted to another part of government. So it's really a seven-tenths library levy.
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But a levy for day-to-day operations is different. Saying no creates an opportunity to send a message to the City Council: You fund it — or not. Make your decision and explain yourself to the voters.
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