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Guest
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 Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 9:21 am EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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At thist point in time, the library board is only looking into this situation...and gathering information. As a goal, there would not be any increased spending. One has to gather more information before one plans and before one even presents information let alone a referendum. I sense fear of information here.
Also, I do not understand why it is unsafe for children to cross Main Street at 3 p.m. when there is a police crossing guard. |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 9:34 am EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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| I have never understood the danger aspect of moving the public library to Main Street. The children who go to the public library after school are at least middle schoolers, right? If they are younger than that, they shouldn't be in the public library on their own anyway. |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 9:50 am EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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| Guest wrote: | At thist point in time, the library board is only looking into this situation...and gathering information. As a goal, there would not be any increased spending. One has to gather more information before one plans and before one even presents information let alone a referendum. I sense fear of information here.
Also, I do not understand why it is unsafe for children to cross Main Street at 3 p.m. when there is a police crossing guard. |
The police are only there a short time. So what happens when a kid has a book report and then leaves the library with no crossing guard in place? In this town parents will scream for increased time on the crossing guards which is money.
There is no fear of information. There is a fear of no planning and a lack of trust based on prior decisions made by the TC.
If the library had presented costs first in terms of operations and expenses it would be one thing. If the TC agreed to hold a referendum before any action occurred it would be one thing. Neither of those occurred and with 2 seats up for re-election I can see the TC trying to rush this through. |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 10:20 am EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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| Guest wrote: | At thist point in time, the library board is only looking into this situation...and gathering information. As a goal, there would not be any increased spending. One has to gather more information before one plans and before one even presents information let alone a referendum. I sense fear of information here.
Also, I do not understand why it is unsafe for children to cross Main Street at 3 p.m. when there is a police crossing guard. |
No one fears information. We're just suspicious of the objectivity. There was already a previous attempt at getting approval to purchase the site without full information and the majority of the TC has already publically proclaimed they support the purchase (without full information) and has already demonstrated an organized campaign to show support for the purchase despite having not received full information. Further, they have consistently dodged or outright refused to commit to public hearings once the information is available or a referendum of voters. And they have intentionally set it up so they’ll have an excuse for no referendum by intentionally declining to start the multi-month process of organizing one and will inevitably say it can’t wait for one once they have the information, as they tried to before (despite the fact that it obviously wasn’t that timely). Further they have not publically outlined or published the criteria for the study. Any study can reach any desired outcome depending on how it is structured and what questions are asked. Why the secrecy if their only goal is objective information with no pre-desired outcome?
It seems to me that those in support of the new library fear transparency and an open vote on the topic. Why is that? |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 10:22 am EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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| Guest wrote: | | I have never understood the danger aspect of moving the public library to Main Street. The children who go to the public library after school are at least middle schoolers, right? If they are younger than that, they shouldn't be in the public library on their own anyway. |
As a parent with kids at the school, I don't fear them moving it for their safety. I oppose it because it is utterly unncessary and a waste of money.
If you want a second library, organize a pledge drive and pay for it among the people who feel its worth their money. Why make me help pay for it when I don't want it and prefer the current library? |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 10:24 am EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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| Quote: | The police are only there a short time. So what happens when a kid has a book report and then leaves the library with no crossing guard in place? In this town parents will scream for increased time on the crossing guards which is money.
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Wait. This doen't make sense. If the kid leaves the present library
after his book report, he may have to cross a street. |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 10:25 am EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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| How can one be transparent without first gathering information? |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 10:41 am EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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Look, that is not my view. That is what people are telling me. That at 3:30 if the kids are leaving school to do a report they will have to cross Main Street and there is no guard which they will want. If they are at the library to do a report then they will need a crossing guard.
Just like when I see mom's carrying their sons back packs who are not little kids or holding their 11 year old sons hand or the mom who called me because our new intern was upset at not getting home until 7pm and could I make sure he left by 5pm. I hear and see things, I don't agree with in terms of parenting.
In terms of transparency, the answer is simple. Gather the operational costs, tell me how they will cover the lost tax revenue and operate, then say here is where our funds are today. You don't need to know the cost of the building to know if you can afford to run it on a day to day basis. If PNC is donated or costs up to X then we can do it without a tax increase. That is a very simple and easy method to use.
I guarantee we all have done similar budgeting. I know I did when I looked at buying my boat. I said I can afford this model if they agree to this price because slip, maintenace and insurance are X. Otherwise, I have to go with this model in order to afford the maintenance expenses and slip. |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 10:53 am EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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Here is some simple budgeting. The PNC tax Revenue is 20K, the rent is 50K and the return from the library was 18K (to keep a surplus to have their own building).
For the purposes lets assume the 18K return never existed. So we have a loss of 70K in tax revenue. The rate goes up 1 penny for every 128K of expense. So if the cost of running the library is only 58K a year beyond their budget, our rate increases by 1 penny. So where my municipal tax is now .375 it becomes .385. An extra 96 dollars a year. That is only at 58,000 of increased expense. If we're looking at 186,000 of expense increase which is very likely my tax is now an additional 192 a year. Then I have sewer costs, liberty way, dam, ballfield. It's more and more costs. |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 11:34 am EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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| Guest wrote: | | How can one be transparent without first gathering information? |
Very simply:
1) Publish for the public the criteria of exactly what information is being gathered.
2) Promise to publish the full results to the public and to allow adequate time for review and have at least one public meeting soliciting public input prior to any action on it. And commit to not have any vote at that public meeting since that usually means they have mae a decision before heairng the input.
3) Better yet, commit to a public referendum on the decision following the release of the information before commiting to any binding action.
That's transparency. Its not hard, its not complicated. And the three people on the TC that have pursued this have consistently refused to commit to ANY of this. Why are they afraid to even commit to a public meeting prior to action? What are they afraid of? |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 11:37 am EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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| Guest wrote: | Here is some simple budgeting. The PNC tax Revenue is 20K, the rent is 50K and the return from the library was 18K (to keep a surplus to have their own building).
For the purposes lets assume the 18K return never existed. So we have a loss of 70K in tax revenue. The rate goes up 1 penny for every 128K of expense. So if the cost of running the library is only 58K a year beyond their budget, our rate increases by 1 penny. So where my municipal tax is now .375 it becomes .385. An extra 96 dollars a year. That is only at 58,000 of increased expense. If we're looking at 186,000 of expense increase which is very likely my tax is now an additional 192 a year. Then I have sewer costs, liberty way, dam, ballfield. It's more and more costs. |
If the school only charges $50K a year in rent right now, that's part of the problem. No wonder they have a surplus. We should be charging many times that, then using the additional revenue to reduce the school tax. |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 12:02 pm EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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Perhaps the TC and the Library Board are being too transparent as it seems that they telling us about each step as they go through the process. Perhaps it would have been better if they kept this all a secret until they had all the information in place....
All that was decided was to ask the current price of the PNC. |
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Perplexed
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 12:07 pm EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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| Guest wrote: | Here is some simple budgeting. The PNC tax Revenue is 20K, the rent is 50K and the return from the library was 18K (to keep a surplus to have their own building).
For the purposes lets assume the 18K return never existed. So we have a loss of 70K in tax revenue. The rate goes up 1 penny for every 128K of expense. So if the cost of running the library is only 58K a year beyond their budget, our rate increases by 1 penny. So where my municipal tax is now .375 it becomes .385. An extra 96 dollars a year. That is only at 58,000 of increased expense. If we're looking at 186,000 of expense increase which is very likely my tax is now an additional 192 a year. Then I have sewer costs, liberty way, dam, ballfield. It's more and more costs. |
It is not an increase of 96 dollars per year. It will be much more than that. You have neglected to include the purchase cost of PNC bank and renovation costs which will be a an additional multi-million dollar price tag to the taxpayer.
I don't understand why we must purchase the PNC when Cranbury already owns land that can be used for a freestanding library in the future. At face value it would be much less expensive to build from scratch than a complete renovation. |
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Historicall Fiscal
Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 12:21 pm EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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| Guest wrote: | ... For example, since we control the library and the school and the library uses school property let’s use that as an opportunity. Why not substantially increase the rent the library has to pay the school? This additional rent seems like a better use of the surplus our tax dollars paid for and would provide income to the school that we could order the Board to use, not for additional expenses but to reduce the rate they tax us to maintain their budget. Then we could either reduce taxes or start paying down debt more quickly. Then, down the road when we have substantially reduced our debt, we can consider if we collectively want something like a stand-alone library.
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Wasnt this the first tax year that the Public Library is paying rent to the school? How many years has the library board sat silent and kept collecting its 0.3%/mil and banking it, while freeloading in the school building for years?
The Cranbury Public Library was founded in 1906, so I would estimate about 102yrs of back rent is due the school and cranbury taxpayers $5,100,000=102yrs*$50K rent that was never collected.
The comptroller should adjust this over time so the back rent would be slightly lower to adjust for the Present Value of the rent.
So I would argue that the library is actually in the hole since it owes the school back rent it never payed for over 102yrs and kept hording our manditory taxes fees. Why arent you as a taxpayer outraged that the Library was allowed to horde these fees for many years. It wasnt until taxpayer outcry from the last PNC meeting that the library started paying rent to the school in 2009, its first year of rent. That's not enough in my book to makeup the shortfall, I would like to resolve this back rent issue before we decide on purchasing the PNC building. |
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Perplexed
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 12:25 pm EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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| Guest wrote: | Perhaps the TC and the Library Board are being too transparent as it seems that they telling us about each step as they go through the process. Perhaps it would have been better if they kept this all a secret until they had all the information in place....
All that was decided was to ask the current price of the PNC. |
So, you are proposing that the TC should negotiate a price on the PNC bank in secret and not tell the taxpayer who is paying the bill? This after it was voted upon by the TC not to pursue the PNC any further at a focused PNC neighborhood meeting last year!
I feel that the library already knows the answer to the PNC donating the property (a big fat NO) and that it just was a ruse to get the TC to negotiate a price to purchase the property. IMO the TC has wasted my time that I could have spent with my family by not sticking to their decision at the special meeting concerning the PNC bank property. They have broken the trust of the taxpayer. If effect, Their votes at any meeting means absolutely nothing. They will twist the outcome and forge ahead with their pet projects whether the taxpayer and their own neighbors want it or not. |
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Guest
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| Posted: Sat, Jul 25 2009, 1:16 pm EDT Post subject: Re: LETTERS: Cranbury Library needs its own space |
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| Perplexed wrote: | | Guest wrote: | Here is some simple budgeting. The PNC tax Revenue is 20K, the rent is 50K and the return from the library was 18K (to keep a surplus to have their own building).
For the purposes lets assume the 18K return never existed. So we have a loss of 70K in tax revenue. The rate goes up 1 penny for every 128K of expense. So if the cost of running the library is only 58K a year beyond their budget, our rate increases by 1 penny. So where my municipal tax is now .375 it becomes .385. An extra 96 dollars a year. That is only at 58,000 of increased expense. If we're looking at 186,000 of expense increase which is very likely my tax is now an additional 192 a year. Then I have sewer costs, liberty way, dam, ballfield. It's more and more costs. |
It is not an increase of 96 dollars per year. It will be much more than that. You have neglected to include the purchase cost of PNC bank and renovation costs which will be a an additional multi-million dollar price tag to the taxpayer.
I don't understand why we must purchase the PNC when Cranbury already owns land that can be used for a freestanding library in the future. At face value it would be much less expensive to build from scratch than a complete renovation. |
Yes, my point is that only on a very simple budget I am guaranteed of a 96.00 a year increase. In likelihood I am at 200 plus if this goes through. We're talking a million plus in renovation, legal, engineering studies, etc...So people who are saying we're already paying a tax are correct, but this will be on top of that cost. |
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