LITTLE ROCK — The Central Arkansas Library System will ask Little Rock voters next spring to approve a bond reissue to raise $19 million for new projects, including a downtown auditorium and parking deck as well as property for a future branch out west.
Bobby Roberts, the library system’s director, officially presented Little Rock city directors with the information Tuesday and turned over a petition of names of people who support calling the special election.
“This one will not raise anyone’s taxes but it will extend them out,” Roberts told city directors.
Roberts’ proposal involves asking voters to reduce a 1-mill property tax approved in 2004 to nine-tenths of a mill, and then extend bond repayments by five years. A mill is one-tenth of a cent, with each mill producing $1 in tax for each $1,000 of taxable property valuation.
For an owner of a $200,000 house, Roberts said, the extended bond issue would add $160 to the tax bill over the life of the bond, or $8 a year.
Voters will be asked, most likely in March next year, to approve reissuing up to $32 million in bonds to help pay off a 2004 bond that has a balance of less than $10 million.
The bond, originally $25 million, helped pay for the construction of the Arkansas Studies Institute, an archive holding papers of several governors and other important collections downtown. The bonds would mature in 2024, if not paid off earlier.
Library trustees originally approved the election in March but backed off after the city decided to put a higher sales tax on the ballot in September. Now that the sales tax election is over, the library is going forward once again.
The ideas remain the same, Roberts said, but some of the details have changed slightly.
Originally the bond reissue would have generated $17 million for new projects. But because more of the original 2004 bond has been paid off, the proposed bond reissue is now estimated to generate $19 million.
Roberts has abandoned the idea of building an underground parking garage that would later be converted into storage for manuscripts in the Arkansas Studies Institute collection. He feared a water main break could damage future collections.
Instead, he expects to build an above-ground deck that would have 150 parking spaces. The deck would eventually be closed in and turned into storage space for the archives.
“When we built ASI, we never thought we’d be as successful as we were,” Roberts said, adding that the archives recently received the papers of former U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder and U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln.
“We’re simply running out of storage space for manuscripts,” he said.
Where the parking deck or the 350-seat proposed auditorium would go has yet to be decided. The library system has two parking lots near its Main Library that it could build on, and there’s also been discussion of partnering with Moses Tucker on a building at President Clinton Avenue and River Market Avenue.
The new bond would also raise money for minor repairs and new furniture for branches that wasn’t in the original proposal. Those repairs are in addition to expanding the Sidney McMath Library on John Barrow Road by 3,000 square feet, from 10,000 square feet to 13,000 square feet.
City directors questioned Roberts about the need for the parking deck.
“I’d just hate to see you all build another parking deck downtown when we have so many already,” City Director Stacy Hurst said.
But existing parking decks downtown couldn’t be converted into storage space for the Arkansas Studies Institute, Roberts said. Even if the library could get permission for the space, the decks weren’t built to hold the weight of an archive, he said.
City Director Erma Hendrix urged Roberts to expand the Sue Cowan Williams Library on Chester Street with some of the new bond money.
“It’s pretty small,” she said about the 8,000 square foot building.
Now that the paperwork has been filed with the city clerk, an election date has to be set. Roberts wants to go to the polls in March. Because elections must be held on the second Tuesday of the month, the library system is looking at March 13.
If Little Rock voters approve reissuing the bonds, it would be the fourth time they’ve done so after an original bond issue in 1994 to construct new library buildings. The original bonds were supposed to expire in 2002.
The original 1994 bonds issue was for $17 million, paid back by 2 mills Little Rock residents approved putting on their property-tax bills.
Voters later authorized reissues of the bonds in 1998 and 2004, generating $15.6 million the last time, mostly for the construction of the $21 million Arkansas Studies Institute. The 2004 bonds issue was actually for $25 million, which paid off about $9 million of debt from the previous bonds issue.
Over the years, the elections that reissued the bonds reduced the tax rate to 1 mill.
Arkansas, Pages 12 on 11/30/2011