Fayetteville voters will be asked to vote a little bit blind next month.
The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to review that nagging question over the planned sale of former City Hospital land from Washington Regional Medical Center to the library.
What that means is that the issue won’t be resolved when voters go to the polls Aug. 9 to decide whether to approve a library expansion plan and raise property taxes to pay for it and for library operation.
The library’s ability to purchase the hospital property affects how the library will expand.
Heirs of the family that donated the land to the city in 1906, more than a century ago, are fighting the $2 million sale in court.
Stephen and Amanda Stone stipulated the land be used for a city hospital, which it was for decades. The city later traded the land to Washington Regional for an acre of land near the medical center for a roundabout.
Subsequent efforts to clear the land’s title for sale triggered legal objections from Stone family heirs. Since then, circuit and appeals courts have ruled in favor of the land sale.
Now the family will get Supreme Court review of the case.
Most likely, the review will take months, which means voters won’t know on Aug. 9 whether the library will get to expand to the old City Hospital property next door.
Library officials knew when they asked for the vote that it was possible they wouldn’t have a final answer on whether Washington Regional could sell the land to the library.
They gambled that they could still make the case to voters, who are being asked to raise property taxes for the library from 1mill to 3.7 mills to fund the expansion. Once construction bonds are paid off, the millage rate would drop to 2.5 mills. The 3.7-mill hike would cost a property owner $54 more per year for each $100,000 of property value.
The $26.5 million derived from the millage hike would cover only part of the cost for a preferred plan for expansion. Another $22 million would come from private donations.
If voters approve the two ballot questions they will face, they’ll be agreeing to pay that new rate regardless of how the lawsuit plays out.
They won’t know whether the library can expand as it prefers, with an 80,000-square-foot stretch onto the hospital land.
Architectural renderings describe an impressive plan. It includes a two-story area for children, roof garden, genealogy area and critical new parking on an L-shaped development south of the existing library.
The alternative plan, which would be forced if the library cannot acquire the hospital property, would cause the library to expand upward on the existing footprint.
How that would alter the projected cost of the project isn’t clear.
But library supporters argue that shouldn’t matter to voters.
The money taxpayers are asked to commit isn’t the full cost of either proposal. The balance is to be made up with private donations. It is those donors who will pay more or less depending on which expansion plan might ultimately be followed.
David Johnson, Fayetteville Library’s executive director, said again last week that the need to expand remains.
“We welcome the court’s review and we want all sides to feel that they’ve been heard about the issue, but the simple fact is that people are loving the library to death, and we’re going to have to press forward,” he said.
Take another look at what voters are being asked to approve.
While they would pay a significant part of the cost of any expansion with the temporary hike that would repay construction bonds, they are also being asked for more operating money for the library. The reduced levy would continue beyond the higher levy for the expansion project. As Johnson and others have said repeatedly, the library has done what it can to make the most of the budget that the old 1-mill level supports. The board has raised fees, frozen salaries and cut back on maintenance, material and programs over the past two years, Johnson said.
That’s not the direction the library, which is an exceptional resource for the region, should go. The library needs to expand. It also needs more operating money. Period.
Nevertheless, convincing voters to go along may have just gotten more difficult with the hard realization that they cannot know just how the library might expand before they vote.
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Brenda Blagg is a freelance columnist and longtime journalist in Northwest Arkansas.