Library millage decrease succeeds in Craighead County, Jonesboro

By: Sonny Albarado - November 8, 2022 9:56 pm

Kenneth Heard, a freelancer in Jonesboro who’s been watching the Craighead County/Jonesboro Library millage election reports. Voters in the county and those in the city voted separately on whether to cut the library’s property tax support from 2 to 1 mills. Complete but unofficial results:

City of Jonesboro

For the decrease — 9,017
Against — 8,969

County

For the decrease — 5,626
Against — 3,520

The property tax is the library’s major source of funding.

The library stirred the ire of some residents in June 2021 with a display of books in the children’s section during LGBTQ Pride Month. Craighead Citizens Taxed Enough formed a ballot question committee and got a referendum to reduce the library millage on the Nov. 8 ballot.

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Sonny Albarado

In his 50-year career, Sonny Albarado has been an investigations editor, a business editor, a city editor, an environmental reporter and a government reporter at newspapers in Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana. Most recently, he retired from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette after serving as projects editor for 12 ½ years. He got his start in journalism as editor of the Nicholls Worth, the student newspaper at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, La., where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 1973. Nicholls awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters in 2014.