East and West Bonner library districts look at redrawing boundaries

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

East Bonner County has one of the most well used and financially healthy library districts in the state. While that’s good news for patrons from Sandpoint to Clark Fork, officials with the West Bonner County Library District see a disparity — and it has less to do with the different population sizes they serve than where the district boundaries are drawn.

“Your lines encroach on my town,” West Bonner Library Director Meagan Mize said at the July 8 meeting of the EBCL Board.

Mize is asking that the district boundaries be redrawn to coincide with the East and West Bonner County school districts. Currently, those boundaries are aligned with the Pend Oreille Hospital District, which means that the EBCL District encompasses a wide swathe of the county, including the communities of Laclede and Vay — and nearly to the Priest River Recreation Area, a.k.a. “The Mudhole” — which Mize argues should be taxed by the West Bonner library.

“This is not Sandpoint, Idaho, this is Priest River, Idaho 83856. All of Vay is Priest River, Idaho 83856. Every single service comes from my side of the county,” Mize said. 

West Bonner Library District (brown) is requesting a redrawing of boundaries with East Bonner Library District (blue). The requested area is in dashed lines. Courtesy image.

If both boards agree to the boundary realignment, 3,166 parcels currently taxed by East Bonner would move to West Bonner, resulting in what Mize estimates would be about $224,000 more revenue for the latter, though the exact tax implications for residents in the affected area remain to be seen. 

The current levy rates for East and West Bonner are similar, at .000239892% and .000234518%, respectively.

According to Interim Director Vanessa Velez, who was later in the week named EBCL director, the state allows the district to levy at the same amount regardless of the boundary lines, but because the tax would fall on fewer property owners, it would increase their overall payment — though “very slightly,” she told the Reader in an email in June.

An estimate from the Idaho State Tax Commission using 2023 figures, and shared with the Reader, suggested that levying the same amount on a smaller territory in East Bonner would result in an increase of $2.28 per $100,000 in taxable value.

The alternative would be to reduce the EBCL District’s levy rate to retain the same tax burden on property owners, but that would result in lower revenue for the district.

“The West Bonner Board is definitely in favor of the change, but obviously it’s less advantageous to East Bonner, due to the potential loss of revenue if we reduced our levy rate,” Velez told the Reader in June.

For Mize, it’s a question of equity and aligning the districts with the patrons who actually use the resources in her part of the county.

“People don’t come to Sandpoint [to use the library],” she said, adding that of 30 West Bonner patrons she surveyed, only one said they currently take advantage of the East Bonner library system. That means many patrons are using West Bonner’s services, but being taxed by East Bonner.

Mize cited statistics showing that 2,713 West Bonner patrons used the bookmobile during the fiscal year to date, compared to 210 in East Bonner. The bookmobile’s circulation during that period — up to and including June 2024 — numbered 4,047 in West Bonner but 398 in East Bonner. In Laclede, 77 patrons accessed the bookmobile during the fiscal year to date in June, while 133 used the service in Vay during that time.

“The amount of patrons that come through my libraries and that check out, it’s 88% higher than what you do on the bookmobile,” Mize said. “We serve hundreds and thousands per year compared to a dozen and a few hundred.”

Putting an even finer point on it, Mize went on to say that because East Bonner is able to tax so many more residents, it’s coffers have grown to the point that the EBCL District’s foregone tax revenue last year totaled $12,453 less than West Bonner’s entire annual budget.

“That’s the money you left on the table last year,” she said.

According to a presentation Mize gave to the EBCL Board in June, West Bonner’s total 2023-’24 tax income came to $451,266. The fiscal year 2024 budget for East Bonner contains just more than $3 million in levy income for a total budget of $3.9 million.

EBCL District Board members discussed the proposal at their July 8 meeting, continuing a conversation that has been ongoing for more than a month. 

Trustee Jeanine Asche said she was “very concerned about long-term” implications of changing the boundaries, and “I don’t want to see people’s property taxes going up anymore than they are.”

“I think West Bonner County Library District is very deserving of more money, but not at our expense,” she added.

Trustee Susan Shea also pushed back on the proposal, saying “we’re doing a real disservice to the taxpayers that we represent” if the board goes forward with a boundary line readjustment without putting it before the public in the form of a referendum — potentially as an advisory vote on the November ballot.

“I think that our taxpayers would be unhappy with an increase in property taxes,” Shea said. “If you have a referendum, and you have 3,000 parcels say, ‘We don’t want to be in your district anymore,’ we can go, ‘Well nobody wants to be in our district, let’s give them to West Bonner.’ I think it’s irresponsible just to give you $240,000 of our annual revenue.” 

Asche also questioned whether it was proper for the board to redraw the boundaries when they were originally established by a vote, “so I feel a little uncomfortable just saying, ‘Well, we’ll just change that vote.’”

Trustee Joan Terrell pointed out that the current boundaries were approved about 50 years ago, before West Bonner had a library district of its own, and aligned with the hospital district rather than school district lines because the East and West Bonner school districts weren’t then separate entities — they split following a vote in the late 1990s. 

“I generally support the idea of having the library district boundaries coincide with the school district boundaries. That makes total sense to me,” said Board Chair Amy Flint. “However, I do agree with a referendum being necessary because I think it’s really important for us to hear from the patrons who will be impacted by this change. I think we need to do that.

“I just think this issue demands more research and intention, and I don’t know how the West Bonner library is going to be able to do that with patrons who are not their patrons, technically,” she added.

Board members agreed that the path forward would be to establish a special joint meeting of the East and West Bonner library boards sometime in September, and in the meantime investigate what it would cost — and establish the deadlines — for setting up an advisory vote.

Any changes to the boundary lines, and subsequent tax implications, wouldn’t affect residents until the fiscal year 2025-’26 budget, and while Asche said, “I don’t see it as being an urgency,” Flint said it would be better to address the proposal sooner than later.

“It would do them [West Bonner] a disservice to keep putting it off and putting it off,” she said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct a misattributed quote.