Arkansans Okay New Library,
Reject Millage Hike
Two library referenda placed before Arkansans August 15 in Benton County and Fayetteville triggered landslide votes—one overwhelmingly approving funds to build a new Fayetteville Public Library, and the other decisively nixing a one-mill tax hike for more materials, upgraded Internet access, and eligibility for interlibrary loan for all but one of Bentonville Libraries’ nine facilities.
In Fayetteville, the 75% yes vote included an absentee ballot received from Germany. “Somebody really wanted to vote,” Washington County Election Commissioner John Burrow said in the August 16 Northwest Arkansas Times. Library supporters had mounted an all-out campaign to get a temporary sales-tax increase that included forming the advocacy group Citizens for a New Library.
The Benton County defeat was equally definitive, with 4,765 no votes trumping 1,786 yeses. “There’s this deal about being anti-tax that’s very prominent in the state and in our area,” library advocate Jim Ferguson said in the August 16 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, adding, “We just didn’t have the means to get all the information out.” He also told the paper that area voters perceived they’d lose control of local library issues by approving the increase.
Posted August 21, 2000.
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