Library to Receive Additional Funding From the City

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The public library will receive $19,000 in additional funding from the City of Chattanooga after weeks of pressure from council chair Jack Benson, who wanted the city to match an equal amount from two Hamilton County Commissioners' discretionary funds.

The ordinance narrowly passed the Chattanooga City Council by a 5–4 vote. Council members Deborah Scott, Peter Murphy, Andraé McGary and Pamela Ladd voted against the measure.

A similar measure to reallocate the $19,000 from the city's contingency funds failed two weeks ago to the chagrin of the council chair. And last week, Benson urged the council to rethink its position.

"The City of Chattanooga had a joint agreement made, going back to Ralph Kelley's term, that we would equally fund the library," he said last Tuesday. "Hamilton County giving the same amount as the City of Chattanooga. That's a moral obligation that we should fulfill."

The city's fiscal 2010 budget allocated $2.64 million to the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library. Hamilton County matched that amount this year, though they haven't always done so in the past, the council chair said. In addition to matching the city, two County Commissioners—Jim Coppinger and John Allen Brooks—gave an additional $19,000 to the library from their discretionary funds.

Council members are divided on whether the additional county funds constitute a financial obligation on the part of the city. Councilwoman Ladd said the obligation was a commitment to match the money that was budgeted by Hamilton County alone.

"And we've done that," she said. "I do not feel we have a responsibility to match and increase our budget item on this just because we had some commissioners with the county who chose to give from their discretionary funds to the library. I think it's a dangerous precedent to try and match what they do with their discretionary funds."

The $19,000 comes from the city's General Fund, which several council members said is the result of unused travel money. "We don't get discretionary funds like the county does," Councilwoman Carol Berz said. "However, it is discretionary whether or not we choose to travel, and we are choosing not to travel this year."
 
The City Council can choose to allocate monies in the budget that were designated for a specific purpose for another purpose, City Finance Officer Daisy Madison said, and the $19,000 will not break the city's budget.

"At this point, our revenues are coming in slightly less than we had projected, but our expenditures are also down," she said. "So at this point I feel like we will operate within our budget given this additional allocation, should you choose to make it."

Following the roll-call vote, the council chair praised his colleagues for not traveling on the city's dime in the last year, which made the reallocation feasible.

"I do want to commend the council," Benson said. "This has been the most frugal council, in fact cheap, as I told you the other day."