By EDWARD HUSAR
Herald-Whig Staff Writer
A chart distributed by the city showing how Quincy compares with 14 other Illinois cities of comparable size paints an inaccurate picture of how the Quincy Public Library's tax rate and tax levy stack up with the other communities.
The inaccuracies were noticed by library officials after a story about the chart appeared in Monday's Quincy Herald-Whig.
"We feel like this needs to be clarified because it looks like we're getting twice as much money as the other libraries -- and we're not," said Nancy Dolan, the library's executive director.
"We're getting less than the average, and our tax rate is also less than the average."
The chart, provided to The Herald-Whig by members of the city's administration, is flawed on several levels when it comes to reporting the library tax rates and levies of the 15 communities. The chart was based on survey data collected by the state comptroller's office.
Under the heading "Library property tax rate (included in the city rate)," the chart listed the rates of just eight of the 15 cities, including the QPL's 2008 tax rate of $0.26646 per $100 of assessed valuation.
However, for some reason the "average" tax rate cited on the chart -- $0.221 -- was calculated incorrectly and apparently based on incomplete data.
Likewise, the "average" tax levy for the 15 districts was listed as $717,733, which also is erroneous for the same reasons.
"They averaged in zeros for the cities that had not reported, which made it look like the average tax rate was lower than ours and that the average money accumulated was about half of ours," Dolan said.
After the chart was publicized, Dolan said, the QPL's accountant called each community for which library tax information was missing from the chart to get their actual rate and levy. The data were then used to calculate more accurate tax rate and levy averages.
According to the information compiled by the accountant, the average tax rate charged by the 15 communities was actually $0.33948 per $100 of assessed valuation compared with Quincy's rate of $0.26646.
Meanwhile, the average tax levy was actually $1.86 million compared with Quincy's $1.38 million.
Dolan noted that some of the missing tax information gathered by the accountant was for public library districts serving the listed communities. Only 11 of the 15 towns actually have a city library tax. However, each of 15 listed communities serves as the central headquarters for its local public library services.
Using information from just the 11 communities that charge a city library tax, the average tax rate was $0.3585, while the average levy was $1.75 million which are both still higher than Quincy's figures.
The 11 cities that charge a city library tax are Champaign, Danville, East Moline, Galesburg, Kankakee, Normal, North Chicago, Pekin, Quincy, Rantoul and Urbana. The four that are part of a library district are Algonquin, Alton, Carpentersville and Granite City.
-- ehusar@whig.com/221-3378
