Dear Editor

As the vote to reallocate half of the funds dedicated to the Natchitoches Parish Library to the Parish Road Maintenance Fund looms, the Library and its supporters are defending its funding with vigor. From almost daily letters to the editor to the bombardment of facebook posts expounding the virtues of its many programs, most of which I, and I suspect you as well, knew nothing or only vaguely about, the campaign to guilt Natchitoches Parish voters into grossly overfunding our Parish library is well underway. I am offering a counter argument in hopes of injecting reason and practicality in place of sentiment and self interest.

The Natchitoches Parish Library is funded almost entirely by ad valorem (property) taxes to the tune of $2,940,011 in 2021. When fines, grants and investment income are added in the total annual revenues rise to $3,061,973. Expenditures, including all the programs that are being lauded now that the overfunding is being questioned, totaled $2,087,635. That leaves an actual surplus of just under a million dollars at $974,338. At the end of the year the total fund balance (the difference between assets and liabilities — what households call net worth) stood at $7,839,269.  The Library’s share of 2021’s total Parish revenues was 18%.  The roads’ share, in comparison, was 5% less at 13%.

Contrast those numbers with those of Avoyelles Parish’s Library, a Parish with a population almost identical to Natchitoches Parish’s.  The Avoyelles Parish Library’s 2021 revenues were $1,099,200, it’s expenditures $755,816, it’s surplus $343,384 and it’s total fund balance $3,535,229. The Natchitoches Parish Library’s revenues exceed those of Avoyelles by $1,962,773. The differences in expenditures was $1,331,819 and in surpluses was $630,954. Ending fund balances differed in favor of the Natchitoches Parish Library’s by a whopping $4,304,040. Put another way, the Avoyelles Parish Library’s revenues were only 36% of Natchitoches’s. Avoyelles Parish Library’s expenditures and surpluses were also 35% to 36% those of the Natchitoches Parish Library. The difference in ending fund balances, as the Natchitoches Parish Library’s surpluses accumulate year after year, is unsurprisingly greater still, exceeding that of the Avoyelles Parish Library’s by 45%.

I’m betting rural Avoyelles Parish residents can get to the library even on rainy days without navigating VW Bug sized potholes and ruts resembling bayous. Moreover, I’m not aware of any complaints about the inadequacies of the Avoyelles Parish Library. If this were a problem I’d expect at least the occasional mention in at least one of central Louisiana’s many news outlets.

My argument is not about defunding the Natchitoches Parish Library. I love books and reading and wish more people knew the pure joy a good book can bring. My argument is for reevaluating how we divvy up our pie. The roads in our Parish are among the worst in a state that is the worst in America. Let’s get our house in order, then each enjoy a good book.

F. Steven Hines, Avid reader and former driving enthusiast