Brentwood Voters Overwhelmingly Approve Library Tax Increase

voters have passed Proposition L by a wide margin, approving a 5-cent increase in the library tax rate.

With all seven Brentwood precincts counted, the measure passed 988 votes to 495. The last rate increase happened in 1984. The rate will go from 25 cents to 30 cents as a result of the approval on Tuesday.

The increase will equate to an additional $19 in taxes annually on a $200,000 Brentwood home.

Head librarian Vicki Woods said the library has had to eliminate two part-time positions, and the budget to buy DVDs and CDs had shrunk by 50 percent. She also said the wide variety of book formats, including e-books, is expensive.

Woods said her predecessor used all of the library's reserves to rehab the building in 2005.

“A good half a million dollars was taken out to do this, and any interest income that we got from revenue off that went away.”

Now that Prop L has passed, Woods said, the library will be able to reinstate its part-time staff.

"We'll be able to have more to work with annually, which means that we can at least double our materials budget, which is where we were about five years," she said.

She also said the library will be able to replace computers more often, rather than "waiting for them to fall apart."

Read related on Patch: