Indianapolis Library Board Crafts $59 Million Indebtedness For Construction Projects To Evade Referendum Requirement

The Indianapolis Public Library Board in August approved incurring a total of $59 million in debt over the next six years for a series of improvements to existing library branches, as well as the construction of new library branches. A resolution (Proposal No. 302) has been introduced in the Indianapolis City-County Council by Councilors Monroe Gray (D), Vop Osili (D), Robert Lutz (R), John Barth (D) and Steve Talley (D). The proposal would give the board approval to issue a series of bonds over the next several years, including the following:

• Brightwood Branch Improvement Project-$5.945 million
• Eagle Branch Improvement Project-$7.66 million
• Perry Township Branch Improvement Project-$9.415 million
• Michigan Road Branch Improvement Project-$7.565 million
• Fort Benjamin Harrison Improvement Project-$10.215 million
• Multi-branch Facility Improvement Project-$8.2 million

What is particularly troubling about the tact being utilized by the library board is that it seems intentionally designed to break up all of these construction projects into multiple projects with separate bond issuances for the sole purpose of evading the protection property taxpayers have in state law, which requires public improvement projects above a certain dollar threshold ($12 million) that are financed through property tax levies to be approved by voters at a referendum. Each of the bond issuances are crafted to walk up to but not cross that threshold.

The construction projects themselves are very ambitious. The largest project is a new Glendale branch on 6 acres where it seems a lot of money was already invested on the existing branch to accommodate a particular politically-connected real estate developer. The others as described by the IBJ, include:

• A new branch library is being built in the Brightwood neighborhood on 4 acres of land to replace the current branch.
• The Eagle branch is replaced with a new branch on 5 acres.  
• Michigan Road gets a new branch that sits on 5 acres.
• Perry Township gets a new branch that sits on 6 acres.
• The new branch at Fort Benjamin Harrison sits on 5 acres.

If you're keeping count, that's over 60 acres of land for new libraries. I haven't assessed the need for these projects, but if the City-County Council is following state law, it will tell the library board it gets one bite at the apple on this major undertaken, which must go before voters at a referendum to let them decide if they want to pay higher property taxes to build more library branches.