Miami-Dade County residents truly love their libraries, but they dont necessarily want to pay more taxes to fund them.

Those are the findings of a new poll conducted on behalf of county government, which is trying to find ways to save the public library system from deep budget cuts. Ninety-five percent of respondents who use the library and 72 percent of non-users said libraries add to their quality of life. Eighty-three percent of respondents disagreed with a statement calling libraries outmoded, obsolete and no longer necessary.

Yet support for increasing the property-tax rate likely the only way to grow the libraries or even keep them intact was inconsistent, according to the survey by Behavioral Science Research, a Coral Gables-based firm.

Forty-four percent of respondents said they would be OK with a tax-rate hike, with 20 percent undecided.

Robert Ladner, the president of Behavioral Science Research, called the support soft.

It is a very vulnerable area, he said this week to Mayor Carlos Gimenezs task force examining the libraries future.

The results mirror a national study published earlier this month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which found that 95 percent of Americans 16 and older consider libraries important. Ninety percent said the closure of their local library would have an impact on their community.

But Pew also found that respondents visited libraries less frequently in the past. The study did not ask about library funding.

Nearly half of Miami-Dades libraries, 22 of 49, faced closure this summer when Gimenez and the County Commission kept this years property-tax rate flat. In the end, the politicians spared the libraries and their 169 employees who would have been laid off by raiding one-time reserves.

With those reserves depleted, the county is looking at a shortfall of about $20 million next year to fund the libraries at the same level as this year, unless the tax rate goes up.

Link:
Survey: Miami-Dade County residents value public libraries, but would they pay more for them?