BELLEVILLE -- Many Belleville Public Library patrons who live outside the city limits are getting a rude surprise when they come in to renew their library cards: The fees they must pay as nonresidents are going up by 100 percent or more.
Here's why:
Instead of the a flat annual fee of $65, as in years past, nonresident patrons are being charged under a new fee structure based on their property tax bills -- a move that would cost nonresident patrons from Swansea and nearby towns without libraries hundreds of dollars in extra fees.
As a result, some nonresident patrons have decided not to renew their Belleville cards, reasoning it would be cheaper either to obtain a card from another library or to spend their money at local bookstores or online.
Robin Dermody, the mother of three school-age daughters, decided not to renew her Belleville library card after being told her annual nonresident fee would to go up to $107.
"We just decided that we we're not going to do it right now," Dermody said after learning her non-resident fee would go up by 65 percent to renew her card. "We just decided to borrow books from friends and do other things."
Harriet Zipfel, the Belleville library's director, said a desire for fairness, not more revenue, led the Belleville Library Board to adopt the tax bill method, which took effect Jan. 1.
The tax bill method "was determined to be more fair to the residents of the city" because someone who is not a resident would then be paying the same amount in fees as the tax bill paid by the owner of a comparable Belleville property.
The tax bill method is used by most of the larger libraries in the metro-east, including Edwardsville, Hayner in Alton and the Six Mile Regional in Granite City, according to a survey last year by the Lewis and Clark Library System.
The exception is Fairview Heights Public Library, which covers far more commercial real estate than other local library districts. It charges nonresidents a flat fee of $91 annually.
Zipfel said she did not have figures on how many nonresident patrons of her library have decided not to renew since the new fee system took effect.
The upside of the new fee structure is that it is making a library card more affordable for some nonresident patrons. That's true for renters, whose annual fee, under the tax bill method, equate to about 10 percent of their monthly rent payments, Zipfel said.
People are coming in to Belleville "who are paying a very reasonable fee when they might not have been able to afford a card at all," Zipfel said. "It's really trying to grant access to more people than we have in the past due to their own economic situation."
Belleville's losses are apparently turning into a gain for Fairview Heights' library.
Belleville's adoption of the tax bill method of calculating nonresident fees is "causing a major stampede to Fairview," said Debbie Owen, the Fairview Heights library's director.
Fairview Heights cardholders may still check out materials from the Belleville Public Library, as well as the other 56 public libraries in the Lewis and Clark Library System.
"I just know from anecdotal evidence from staff at the desk is that we're seeing a lot of people who formerly had cards at Belleville," Owen said.
For all of 2008, the Fairview Heights library had 31 nonresident cards on file. This compares to June of this year, it had 33 nonresident cards, Owen said.
"If it keeps up at this rate, we will double the number of non-resident cards," she said.
Those new patrons could soon include Swansea resident Wendy Fink, her husband and their three school-age kids.
Fink decided not to renew her Belleville Public Library card in May after learning that her non-resident fee would jump to more than $300.
"I was disappointed because our children had always enjoyed visiting the Belleville Public Library," Fink said.
Consequently, Fink has been buying books for her kids at the Barnes & Noble in Fairview Heights and ordering out-of-print books off eBay, she said.
Now Fink said he considering the idea of obtaining a card from the Fairview Heights library, which would give her the same privileges at the Belleville library as a Belleville cardholder, but at a far lower price, because both libraries are in the Lewis and Clark system.
Fink called her decision not to renew her Belleville card "a case of basic economics" because Belleville residents are forced to pay a library tax based on their property values.
"Those outside the city are not," Fink said. "So it depends on what value they place on their library use. In our case, $300 a year for a library card isn't enticing."
E-Mail
Print
