The Elia Wood Paegelow Foundation is preparing for a major fundraising effort to provide support for the Wood Place Library, according to information presented last week at the California United Church of Christ fellowship hall.
Attorney John Kay, who has served on the Elia Wood Paegelow Foundation Board, said the focus of the foundation and the Friends of the Library must be to move forward with the Wood Place Library in California, to keep it operating and working toward a city library tax, then toward a county library tax.
The Paegelow Foundation, board President Debbie Staton said, has decided to use its assets to keep the Wood Place Library operating until additional tax support can be approved by voters.
The foundation board voted to use $50,000 to help with this effort. In addition, the foundation will conduct fundraising to keep the library open and set up a petition/campaign committee to seek formation of a legal county library. Staton said the committee needs members from California, Jamestown, Clarksburg, Latham, High Point, McGirk, Lupus, Fortuna and the surrounding areas.
The petition drive is seeking volunteers to make and prepare yard signs and banners and conduct a door-to-door campaign to hand out brochures.
The organizational meeting of the petition/campaign committee will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Bolinger Room at the Wood Place Library, 501 S. Oak St., California. Those interested can email Laura Burger at [email protected].
No significant tax revenue will come in until after Dec. 31, 2018. Estimates of funds needed to keep the library operational until that time are $165,454. The total available currently to that date is $80,831. That means $84,823 is needed via fundraisers and donations.
Since Tipton is seeking to vote in a city tax for its own municipal library, that city currently is not included in the petition effort.
Voter approval of a county library tax also would bring Moniteau County taxpayers access to free memberships in the Jefferson City and Columbia libraries.
A judge ordered the Moniteau County Library District's dissolution in February after determining it had been created illegally because a majority of the county's voters in 1997 voted against adding a proposed property tax to pay for district operations. As the library district was never valid, it could not accept the 2013 gift of the Wood Place Library, the judge ruled as a result of a lawsuit by the city of Tipton and three individuals. The city of Tipton is seeking to place a municipal library tax on the Aug. 8 ballot to support its Price James Library.