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Originally Posted by ApK
Per capita tax going to libraries is a few dollars a year at most, and by all accounts, many of the people paying taxes don't use the libraries. Compare that to someone who wants to use the library paying $50 directly to them, and I'm not sure how "unfair" comes into it.
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According to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg library website:
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Non-residents of Mecklenburg County can obtain a Charlotte Mecklenburg Library card for an annual fee, which is approximately equal to the annual property tax a Mecklenburg County resident pays to support the Library.
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So at $45, quite a bit more than just a few dollars per capita - and the non-resident cards are also explicitly household cards. And as you yourself said, a lot of townspeople don’t use the library at all, or use it minimally - but they have no choice in terms of subsidy. So it seems virtually certain to me that someone who opts in at the same price is someone who’s going to be a heavier user.
I don’t know that “unfair” is the accurate term to use in these situations; the library sets a fee and people pay it. However, I think in a lot of cases the library doesn’t understand its costs and how they relate to this particular revenue stream, and that’s why libraries such as FLP and now Brooklyn have cut off non-residents; they finally crunched the numbers.
I’ve read 35 library books so far this year; let’s round that down to a rate of 60/year. Some of those were books with an unlimited license and no waitlist. But the vast majority were books with an exploding license or waitlist or both, so those transactions had a cost. It’s hard for me to see how $50 would cover that. And especially for libraries which offer Hoopla to paid patrons; Hoopla is hugely expensive.