Tipton residents seeking new library tax

Many Tipton residents want a tax-supported library operating in their city.

Since last month's circuit court ruling that the 19-year-old Moniteau County Library District (MCLD) wasn't created legally, some Tipton residents have launched a petition drive to create a new, inside-Tipton's-city-limits library tax to support the city's Price James Library and keep it going.

The group, the Friends of the Price James Library, sponsors the petition campaign and is asking registered voters who live inside Tipton's city limits to sign their petition - 3-7 p.m. today or 9 a.m.-noon Saturday at the Willow Fork Restaurant Building at the corner of Missouri 5 and U.S. 50 in Tipton.

"The Price James Friends have seen great support - I understand they already have 140 signatures, when they only needed half that to get it on the ballot," attorney Annie Willis, of Jefferson City, said Thursday. "That is an option where there is no county district. So if the judgment stands that the MCLD is dissolved, there is an opportunity to create a municipal district."

Willis is the lead lawyer in a lawsuit - filed in 2015 by the city of Tipton and three western Moniteau County residents - that challenged operations of the library as being based in California, with the Wood Place Library serving as the countywide library's headquarters.

The story has been a complicated one.

When the Moniteau County Commission authorized the library district in 1996, the county had two privately owned libraries - Price James in Tipton and Wood Place in California - but no public libraries.

The commission created two subdistricts and proposed a property tax for voters in each subdistrict to approve.

However, only voters in the Tipton-based Western subdistrict endorsed the tax.

In his Feb. 21 ruling dissolving the district, Special Judge Donald Barnes agreed the commissioners legally placed the district proposal on the 1997 ballot, but found: "There is no provision in the statute for the contingency where one subdistrict passes (a proposal) and another does not," or that would allow a district to be created in areas that didn't vote for it.

In 2004, the library board asked California city residents if they would support a library tax to be used only for operations of the then-private Wood Place Library - and they did.

However, the judge wrote, "There is no statutory authority for a library district, without (county) commission authority, to create a new subdistrict with different boundaries than any earlier proposition, and initiate a vote for it."

So, he said, the taxing district inside California's city limits wasn't created legally.

Willis said the Tipton petition isn't the same kind of action because, if Barnes' ruling is upheld, Moniteau County again has no countywide library district.

"At this point, it is still unclear whether or not the dissolution will stand," she told the News Tribune. "California would also be free to put a municipal district on the ballot, or the county could do a vote for a different, county-wide district."

For years, the old district contracted with both private libraries to provide services.

However, the 2015 lawsuit complained, after the district accepted a donation of California's Wood Place Library in 2013, there grew to be less and less money available to the Tipton area for continued support of the Price James facility or other library services.

Willis said, "The library board was responsible for serving two subdistricts and deliberately refused to serve (the) Western subdistrict at all."

County Librarian Connie Walker said in a Feb. 24 statement, "The City of Tipton refused to recognize that the County Library Board had budgetary authority over all county library tax revenue."

However, Willis said, Barnes found a different answer, explaining, "The board, its tax and its practices were illegal, and the board has taken authority for itself more than once that it does not possess."

Barnes wrote in his Feb. 21 opinion, since the district never was created legally, the donation of the Wood Place building in California was not a valid transfer.