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CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Supporters of a Cedar Rapids library are seeking a 27-cent tax levy to help with its operating costs.
The city clerk's office said Tuesday that a petition requesting the property tax increase had enough signatures for the issue to be eligible for the November ballot. The petition had more than 3,000 signatures and was delivered to Cedar Rapids City Hall on Tuesday, television station KWWL (http://bit.ly/1hSZSQD ) reported.
Chris Casey of the Our Library, Our Community Campaign said a 4 cent levy already was in place before the downtown library was built, but that it recently expired. Casey's group is pushing for the 27-cent levy.
The library's director, Dana Schmidt, said the city was able to rebuild the library in 2013 using federal emergency management funds plus private donations after a 2008 flood. Schmidt said funding the library's operations has been an ongoing problem.
"For multiple years now, the library has been looking into sustainable levels of funding and how we can make that happened and in the state of Iowa the way to do that is through this special library levy," Schmidt said.
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Information from: KWWL-TV, http://www.kwwl.com
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