MOUNT VERNON — Restoring hours, staff and books is high on John Chidester’s agenda now that the library levy has passed. These restorations will be made as soon as the library system gets money raised by the library levy.
Chidester thinks the Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County will be getting money from the levy early in 2010, probably February or March.
“It all depends on when we are able to get the first chunk of money from the county auditor,” Chidester said. “We are allowed to request an advance two weeks after the tax bills go out. We don’t know what date that’s going to be yet because they are working on getting them out now. But I guess they shoot for around the first of January.”
Chidester said the auditor has to give the library an advance on tax collections if asked. The amount the library can ask for depends, basically, on how much money the county has collected through the levy. This is not a loan but an advance based on collected revenue from the levy.
Knox County Auditor Jonette Curry said this is commonplace with school districts and although the library had never asked for an advance, the process would work the same as for the schools.
“The advance is always 90 percent of collections,” she said. “That is what has been collected to date. They have to send us a notice; an advance notice telling us they want the monies. It has to be in letter form and they can be sending them in now. Two weeks after the bills are sent out we do our first advance.”
Curry said the first advance would be for 90 percent of what had been collected to that point. A second advance is done one day after the due date for the taxes to be paid. This is 90 percent of the money collected since the first advance is paid.
“Then the third advance is done after all the mail is posted in the treasurer’s office,” Curry explained. “That is approximately one week after the due date.”
When the time comes to disperse the total amount of money collected from the tax, the advances are subtracted from the final amount. Curry said the library levy is expected to collect about $1,033,000 the first year.
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