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publiclibrary week, a citizen asked why we have a separate and not join the St. Louis County system, presumably to save the taxpayers money. First, it is important to note that the University City Public Library (UCPL) is an independent political subdivision with its own tax rate. Library tax revenue is not part of the City’s general fund, but is a dedicated tax, which can only be used for library purposes. University City citizens do not pay the St. Louis County library tax. Should the UCPL disband and the City join the St. Louis County system, citizens would still pay a library tax, which might be less than citizens are currently paying today, but would receive less services for their tax dollar. Our residential tax rate for UCPL services is $.23 (per $100 of assessed value) while the County Library tax rate is $.14. St. Louis City’s rate is $.48. The nine-cent difference between the UCPL rate and the County rate amounts to approximately $550,000 annually, or about $14.40 per citizen, which is a little more than half the cost of the top book on today’s New York Times Best Seller List. More importantly, UCPL provides more services than are currently provided by the County system: Access to other area libraries: First, it should be mentioned that any resident of University ? City is entitled to a free library card at St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and St. Charles City/County Library systems. The University City card that residents apply for at our library is valid at all other MLC member libraries. Therefore, through reciprocity agreements signed in 2000, almost all services St. Louis County offers its taxpayers are already available to University City residents free of charge. Sunday hours . Only four of St. Louis County branches are open at all on Sundays, and ? even those are closed from Mid-May to early September. None of the open branches are near University City (they include Headquarters, Daniel Boone, Tesson Ferry, and Florissant Valley). Our library is very heavily used by the entire community on Sundays, and our Jewish citizens would be denied any weekend hours if we were closed on Sundays. Dedicated Youth Services room and staff . St. Louis County Libraries do not have ? separate children’s areas – the children’s books are just located in one area of the general library space. They do not have children’s librarians with Masters’ degrees in Library Science (MLS) at their branches. Our library’s Youth Services department has always been directed by a librarian with an MLS degree who specializes in working with children and teens. Reference service provided by trained librarians . County Library branches do not offer ? reference service at all open hours by librarians with MLS degrees, as ours does. We have five degreed librarians on our reference staff and the only time we do not have one or more reference librarians on duty is Friday evenings. A home town library . There are 91 municipalities in St. Louis County. Nine of these, ? including University City, have their own libraries. St. Louis County Library serves the remainder of the 82 municipalities and unincorporated areas with 20 branches. The large majority of these branches are considerably smaller than the UCPL. Would our community even have a library within its borders if we received services from St. Louis County? Perhaps not – the Mid-County branch is located in Clayton, the County seat, and our building might be closed. A broader collection . Our library is in a consortium with the eight other independent ? municipal libraries. Membership in the MLC opens up a collection of over 730,000 items, and a book held by another member library can be delivered to a patron at University City Public Library in a day or two. We actually have more unique titles than St. Louis County since our libraries reflect our differing communities and have grown up over time – most County Library branches tend to repeat the same collection of materials that are found at other locations. We actually lend out more than we lend from the MCL, which demonstrates the quality of our collection as well.