There was no opposition Tuesday night to the Salt Lake City Library System's request for a $1.7 million tax increase to fund the city's five branch libraries and the City Library downtown.
"I may be unusual in that I actually enjoy paying taxes" as long as those taxes go to good use like a great library system, said Dana Carroll, who was among a couple dozen Salt Lake City residents on hand at City Hall to ask the City Council for a tax hike.
Yvonne Lee said the increase, which would boost taxes on a $175,000 home by $12 to $15 yearly, was minimal and meant residents would have to forgo only six scoops of ice cream a year or one convenient store soda each month. It's a small cost for a good public library system where people of any income and educate themselves for free.
"A democratic society is maintained by a well-educated population," she said.
There were also more than 15 people who spoke in favor of pornography filters at the library, saying the city's system shouldn't forgo $22,000 in state grants by not adopting filters.
Both budgets the Salt Lake City Library Board has forwarded on to the City Council don't contain the $22,000. Still, the library board hasn't decided whether it will adopt filters or not. Its current policy is not to filter; librarians visually monitor Internet screens
The library board's decision will likely come before the City Council adopts its budget next month.
The City Council will be considering both the tax increase and the filtering issue as it determines whether it will approve the library system's proposed budget.
While the library board sets policy for the library system, the council might be able to weigh in on the filtering issue because it deals with state and federal grant monies that would be unavailable to the library if it chose not to filter.
Congress and the Legislature have passed laws forbidding federal and state funding from libraries that don't employ pornography filtering devices on Internet access.
Many complained Tuesday that without filters children would be inadvertently exposed to screens containing pornography.
"We want good libraries, we want to fund them and we want safe libraries for our children," Phillip Brough said.
Also Tuesday, Mayor Rocky Anderson said he was no longer recommending firing seven employees from the city's concrete replacement team, which does snow plowing and other odds jobs as well.
Cutting the positions would have saved the city $450,000. Anderson suggested the city make an addition $1 million in cuts in capitol improvement projects instead. Anderson has already proposed lowering the city's investment in capitol improvement projects this year.
Council member Dale Lambert said he was surprised Anderson was willing to cut even more from capitol improvement projects. The city's decaying infrastructure has led city leaders to spend 9 percent of the General Fund on capitol improvement projects in the past. Anderson's plan, before the $1 million in cuts, was to fund projects with only 7 percent of the general fund.
E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com