Voters to Decide Tuesday on Tax to Bolster Library

For six months, experts and advocates have been arguing publicly about whether Pasadena needs a special tax to bolster its library system.

On Tuesday, the voters will get their say when they consider Proposition 1, the only issue on the special municipal election ballot.

As conceived by the City Council, the measure--which would draw an extra $20 a year from each house, $13 from each apartment and $147 from each non-residential parcel--would provide $1.3 million, enough to restore the library to 1989 service levels.

Proponents say the city needs the new tax to prevent further cuts in service in the libraries, which have faced three years of harsh cutbacks. Opponents say the City Council should cut other items in the city’s budget.

Anti-tax people charge that the city has been using scare tactics to drum up support and proponents allege that the other side has misrepresented the positions of influential community groups.

“For us, it’s like a David and Goliath thing,” said Gus Martin, one of a half-dozen citizens who formed Citizens for Responsible Government to fight the tax. The tiny group has spent about $11,000, compared to $160,000 that has been raised by the other side.

With nominal support from the Chamber of Commerce and City Councilman Isaac Richard, Citizens for Responsible Government is pitting itself against most of the civic establishment. “This is not a library issue but a city budget issue,” said group member Glen Kissel, an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We’re very concerned that, if they pass this tax this year, what other department will be held hostage to a tax next year?”

Proponents say it is much too late to dicker with the budget to try to find more library funds. Without a tax infusion, city officials say, eight branch libraries could be closed in January and the Central Library--recently closed on Mondays and on weekday mornings--could also be closed on Fridays.

“They may be right,” said Cathy Brooke, chairwoman of Save Pasadena’s Library. “There may be some areas of city government where money could be found. But like all things, it takes time to work it out.”

Kissel and others say the state of emergency that the pro-tax group portrays is just a way of scaring voters into approving it.

“More than likely, there will be no shutdowns,” said Joseph K. Hopkins, who moderates the Political Reform Round Table, a group of fiscal conservatives that meets monthly to criticize the City Council. “The council functions on public opinion. If the tax is defeated, the council will have to make it a priority.”

“These guys are very well-meaning,” said Digby Diehl, a writer and television personality who lives in Pasadena and supports the tax. “I know they’re very sincere in a kind of Ross Perot desire to clean up government. But they’re asking me to believe they’re going to do what they haven’t done in four years”--stop the City Council from cutting the library budget.

Tax supporters complain that the opponents have sought to blur the lines about who opposes Proposition 1 by listing among their ranks in the sample ballot a member of the Linda Vista/Annadale Assn. and a former board member of Friends of the Pasadena Library. Both organizations support Proposition 1.

There has been “considerable public confusion” over those names, said Barbara Larson, a spokeswoman for Save Pasadena’s Library. The opponents deny that they sought to misrepresent their membership.

Richard, the only council member opposed to the measure, says it is a regressive tax, unfairly burdening his low-income constituents in Northwest Pasadena.

Supporters say they have included exemptions for low-income property owners who earn less than $28,000 for a family of four.