The city of Chattanooga's decision to end the sales tax agreement with Hamilton County has the city of Collegedale reading up on options to keep operating its library branch, which is the most-used of the five-branch system.
"This is the only branch in the Chattanooga-Hamilton County system that's not in the [Chattanooga] city limits," said Collegedale City Manager Ted Rogers. "That's why it's popping up on the radar screen. I do not anticipate the county helping with this. The county is literally going to be millions and millions of dollars short because of the [agreement's] dissolution."
Rogers said Chattanooga had previously budgeted $499,000 a year to keep the doors open.
"If we separate, the city of Chattanooga, I assume, will take all the books and everything out of there," said Vice Mayor Tim Johnson. "If we have to replace all the books I'm not sure we can really afford that."
Collegedale's budget, which is due to be passed in June, will likely have to be amended to reflect what are still unknowns at this point. The situation remains an open book as far as options.
"We're going through the laundry list of options," said Rogers. "If they pull out of the process and the public demands it stay open, somebody's got to pay for that. We're trying to dig through that and see what we can come up with. If you added that level to our budget it's almost 8 or 9 percent in costs just for that. That's a big strain on the city of Collegedale; we don't have that."
Chattanooga has offered to keep running the library if Collegedale pays for it, according to Rogers.
He is also considering buying the property and letting an outside party operate the library. Systems like Library Systems Inc. provide all the material and management. In that case, the issue becomes who is allowed to use the branch.
"That's going to be a challenging part going forward - do we limit the people using it?" Johnson said. "The way I look at it, the citizens of Collegedale would be funding it. I'm not sure it's fair to the citizens of Collegedale to be funding what other people are going to use as well."
Mayor John Turner said losing library access "would be tragic to this end of the county," but acknowledged that his citizens could be the ones paying for it.
"I don't think the citizens of Collegedale would be terribly upset with a nominal property tax increase if it comes down to keeping that open," he said.