Library Trustees Seek Comment On Dissolution Petition Stevens County Officials Say Law Doesn’T Say Who’S In Charge

Stevens County Rural Library District trustees will take public testimony to help them decide how to respond to a petition to dissolve the district.

Trustees are expected to make a decision a week after the Sept. 14 public hearing. The hearing and the Sept. 21 meeting both will be held at 4 p.m. in the Old School House in Loon Lake.

It is not clear how much discretion library officials have in responding to the 2,880-signature petition, which was presented Aug. 7 by residents who oppose the district’s property tax of 50 cents per $1,000 of assessed value.

An ambiguous, never-before-used state law says a library district “may be dissolved” by a majority vote on a referendum that “may be placed upon the ballot” if 10 percent of district voters sign a petition.

While the law says “may” instead of “shall,” it doesn’t say who’s in charge. County Prosecutor Jerry Wetle and Auditor Tim Gray say library trustees are responsible for any decisions.

Gray said he will put the referendum on the Nov. 7 general election ballot only if the library district sends him a resolution by the Sept. 22 deadline.

Using copies of the petition sheets, Gray has checked 1,020 signatures and found 862 - or 84.5 percent - of those to be valid.

“At the current pace, it would probably validate by about 378 signatures,” Gray said.

He said he doesn’t plan to check any more signatures unless library trustees ask him to do so and send him the original petitions.

But library district Director Regan Robinson said trustees don’t plan to do that.

She said library officials “take very seriously the number of signatures gathered on the petition,” but their attorney has advised that the petition is premature. The law says library districts can’t be dismantled until they have been “in operation for three or more years,” and Robinson said she and library trustees believe that requirement has not been met.

Although voters approved the district in November 1996 and trustees were appointed in spring 1997, the district didn’t receive tax money until 1998 and didn’t open its first library until July 1998.

“This criterion, set in the state law, seems to be crucial to the issue,” Robinson said in a prepared statement. “The public are to be given at least three years to experience the library district before voting to dissolve it.”

Yet another potential snarl is waiting in the wings if the referendum is placed on the ballot.

Writers of the decades-old law apparently didn’t contemplate the possibility that incorporated towns might vote to join a rural library district - as Springdale voters did last fall. The law prohibits people who live in incorporated towns from signing petitions to dissolve library districts and from voting on such proposals.

Springdale’s 207 registered voters might not be enough to affect the outcome of the dissolution drive, but excluding them could be the basis for a constitutional challenge.