Library Board Doesn't See Eye to Eye in ‘Understanding’ with City

Evanston's autonomous Library Board of Trustees faces new challenges and an altered connection to the city as it plans its fiscal year 2012 budget.

Starting next year, Evanston’s Library Board of Trustees will act as an autonomous governing body after adopting a new library fund model last September. But with self-governance comes new financial and political challenges, the details of which the board discussed and debated at Wednesday night’s board meeting. Amid both fiscal year 2012 and long-term planning processes, the board is remapping its relationship with the city by creating a “memorandum of understanding” between the two entities and determining how the new library fund model will finance capital improvement projects without relying on city-issued bonds. With its newly gained powers the library board can levy a tax as a percentage of the money the city collects from property …

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