Saline County voters to decide on millage issue for county library

The head of the Arkansas Library Association says if the millage supporting the Saline County Library is reduced, the library will close within two years. 

“Libraries haven’t gotten any cheaper to run,” said Adam Webb, director of the Garland County Library and president of the library association, an organization that has been supporting libraries for more than a hundred years. “If anything, there are added expenses. If I was faced with losing 35% of my funding and trying to provide the same level of service, I can’t imagine how that math works. They’ll be out of money in two years.”

The Saline County Quorum Court voted in May to place a measure on the November ballot, asking voters to decide if they want to reduce the library’s tax base of 1.7 mills to 1.1 mills, thereby chopping about a third of the library’s overall funding.

Saline County Republican leadership has had a fraught relationship with its library. Three years ago, the library’s director, Patty Hector, took exception to being micromanaged by county officials, namely County Judge Matt Brumley, who tried to tell her where to put books officials found offensive. 

She ignored him, and he fired her. Hector, whose career spanned 38 years, sued Brumley, and in August, she had the last laugh, pocketing $275,000 in a settlement with the county.

Despite the fact that the Republicans’ nemesis is gone, they are still gunning for the library, this time passing an ordinance, on a 10-2 vote, to ask voters to cut the library’s funding. Their rationale is that, because the county’s population has risen and tax proceeds have increased with that growth, the library can make do with a reduction in its millage. 

One could make the argument that if such a reduction is OK for the library, the 5 mills in taxes collected for the county general fund and the 3 mills collected for the county road fund should also be reduced. Not surprisingly, no county official has suggested that.  

More to the point, while the tax proceeds have indeed risen, the amount spent per capita has not appreciably changed across the years. In 2010, the library received a little less than $2.5 million from its millage to service a population of 107,000, according to county figures. If you figure in inflation between 2010 and 2025 – a cumulative amount of around 48% – and the increase in population to more than 133,000, the necessary revenue to service that number of people is about $4.6 million, which is very close to the $4.9 million the library actually received in 2025. 

In short, revenue for the library has been essentially flat. 

Officials have not said how the library would accommodate such a large reduction in its funding. That has left the door open for quite a bit of educated speculation on the part of those opposing the cuts.

In plain view is the plight of the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library. In 2022, voters trimmed the library’s millage from 2 mills to 1. That meant cutting staff, slashing hours of operation and eliminating outreach services. Two years later, an effort to restore funding failed. 

Lisa Bergren, treasurer of the Saline County Library Alliance, the group that is opposing the tax cuts, said she thinks the same thing will happen to the Saline County library if it loses funding.

“East End opened a branch a couple of years ago,” Bergren said. “There’s not another library available for several miles so the public really appreciates that it is there. So I think the first thing that will go will be the lease on that building, and then they’ll start cutting hours of operations. It will start slowly but over time, but week after week, services will fall off across the board.”

Bergren said the alliance members spend most of their time educating voters about the millage issue.

“Most people don’t even know this is on the ballot,” Bergren said. “At every event we’ve been to, nobody knows anything about it. We have educated so many people.”

The lack of publicity about the millage issue is “definitely on purpose,” Bergren said.

“County officials are hoping that people haven’t heard about the issue until they walk into the voting booth,” Bergren said. “And if voters don’t know what the measure is for and they see that it’s a reduction in their taxes, they may just vote for it. Once we’ve had a chance to explain what the vote will do, we win them over to our side.”

To help get the word out, Bergren said the alliance has raised $3,000, which has paid for signs, campaign flyers, a billboard and a booth at festivals. 

“The campaign is going well,” she said. “We would rather not be having to do this, but people seem energized so we are cautiously optimistic.”

Bergren, a registered nurse, calls herself a “public menace” because she watches – and comments on – what Brumley and Justice of the Peace Josh Curtis, who sponsored the millage ordinance, and other members of the Quorum Court say on social media. 

“The county judge likes to use pie charts to explain why the library needs less money,” Bergren said. “I say, ‘But you’re just taking the whole pie away.’”

She said she didn’t understand some of the motivations for cutting the library’s funding.

“I’m not sure what they are thinking,” she said. “One group of constituents, homeschoolers, depends on the library. There are times when the main library is packed with them. They really, really like having access to the library, but if this passes, there won’t be as much access.”   

Webb told the Arkansas Times in May that a proposal to change a library’s millage should have been instigated by county residents – not justices of the peace.

“Amendment 38 says it has to be a citizen-led petition,” Webb said. “There’s no mechanism in Arkansas code for the Quorum Court to do it. I’m fairly confident in how library funding works, having more than 20 years of experience with it, and I can’t find any justification for a quorum court to initiate the question.” 

He said Thursday that he has suggested to the alliance that if the millage reduction passes, the group should challenge the measure in court.

We called and left messages for Brumley and Curtis for this story, but we did not get a response.