Members of the Tinley Park Library Board were told by village trustees that they have champagne tastes but a beer budget.
Library representatives met with Village Board members last week to ask for a tax increase to help operate the bookmobile that the library plans to buy with a $15,000 state grant, but they ended up defending their spending habits.
“Services are great to have, but somebody’s got to pay for them,” Mayor Ed Zabrocki said. “The people are fed up (with taxes). We’ve got to draw some lines. In the last nine years, you were over budget four times.”
With annual costs of operating the bookmobile at $115,000, the state gift seems to be a financial curse rather than a blessing, although library administrator Pam Deiters said it could take the place of building a library on Tinley’s west side.
Deiters asked the board to add 3 cents to the library’s portion of the tax levy to offset bookmobile costs. The current property tax rate is $1.12 per $100 of equalized assessed valuation, with 20.5 cents of that going to the library.
The village will establish a line of credit not exceeding $375,000 for the library until it receives its portion of property tax revenue this fall.