Where Your Money Goes, What You Get

If you live in the city limit of Sycamore, whether you own or rent, you pay some money to have the public library in your community. For people who own, it is easy to see exactly what you pay for library service by looking at your tax bill. Renters pay their monthly rent and the then the building owners use a portion of that money to pay property taxes.

In the State of Illinois the first laws written in the 1800's to collect tax money for public libraries were written for municipalites and as such library services were offered to househelds within the municipality limits. Sycamore Public Library is a municipal library. Later another law was written to allow a library to become a district library. This made the library autonomous from the municipality and provided a venue for expanding services beyond city limits. In both cases, the libraries are property tax supported and every household that pays a tax to the library is eligible for library service.

People who live outside of a library district do not pay any taxes to support the library. By law, they have the option to annually pay for services at their closest public library. (It was determined that closest public library was the library within your school district.)At Sycamore Public Library, the Board of Trustees has decided that the fairest method for determining the fee for non-residents is to use the same calulation used for determining the city tax bill. (We take the net taxable value of your property and mutiply it by the library tax rate. This year's rate is .0018451. It is the lowest rate in more than 10 years.) For renter's, the fee is calculated by taking one month's rent and multiplying it by .15. This is the lowest rate allowable by State law.

These property tax funds equal 85% of the total library revenue.The other 15% comes from fines, fees, and grants. Our tax rate has decreased every year but on in the last 8 year's yet we continue to provide more services to more people. In 2001 we had only 4,500 registered card holders and we now have over 9,600 valid registered card holders. The library is open over 3,211 hours a year with an average of 9.5 hours a day.

We offer technology resources, books, movies, music, and pregramming. Books come in a variety of formats such as large print, audio, and elctronic. Our technology resources include access to computers with internet and office software, wi-fi, basic computer skills training, online subscription databases, and 24/7 access to reference help from your home computer.

We offer programs throughout the year for people of all ages on a wide variety of topics. In the summer, we help to make reading fun and rewarding for everyone with programs for children's, teens, and adults.

Finally, the library board and staff accomplish all of this with just a tiny portion of your tax dollars and a lot of ingenuity.