Washoe County libraries face financial impact after WC-1 fails on Election night

RENO, Nev. (KOLO) - "All the smiling faces you have seen help run the library, you are going to see a lot less of them. That is hard to see that happen," said Jeff Scott, the Washoe County Library Director.

Ballot question WC-1 failed at the ballot box on Election night. 52% percent of votes, falling in favor of removing the Library Expansion Tax that was established 30 years ago. "In 1994, Library Director Martha Gould was the one who had the vision to provide overrides. The override is that every 2 cents of every $100 assessed property value will go directly to the library," added Scott. The library tax was approved in 1994 by a .1% margin and was expecting to be renewed this year. Voters decided differently.

The Expansion Tax usually raised 4.5 million dollars for Washoe County library improvements.

"You have a South Valley library, you wouldn't have had that without the tax. You have a Northwest Reno library, you wouldn't have had that without the tax. Once it passed in 1994, immediately, in the first ten to fifteen years you have four different libraries created from it. Northwest Reno, South Valley, Incline Village, and Spanish Springs were all created in the last few years, up until 2008."

Now, the 4.5 million dollars will be controlled by the County Commissioners. Slicing the library's budget to 12 million and decreasing its resources. "We'll lose about 23 staff, $1.4 million in our book budget and about $200,000 in our technology and internet rates. We will have to make that cut out of the existing budget and the remaining is about 12.5 million dollars," said the Library Director.

Scott says the end result was unexpected, especially after conducting surveys and informing the public about the Renew Washoe Libraries initiative. "Our poll, we did in June of this year said that 68% would support the tax."

Moving forward, the expansion tax will expire in June 2025. "It's unfortunate to see that because now we are going to see those consequences happen. People's property tax won't change. You are still going to get the same property tax collected. You are going to see your services go down as of July 1," said Scott.