> Of course it is reasonable to blame the voters. There was a ballot measure that would have saved the library and they chose to vote against it. It was entirely in their control.

This is the folly of modern day politics among the citizenry. That the only option is take more money or fail, so it's obvious that the ones given two bad choices are at fault. Was there a ballot measure to reroute funds from somewhere else? Why not? We should not pretend budget-making is entirely in the voters' control when the only options they are given is to throw more money at a problem or lose a library.

Blame then for what? If something becomes too expensive, and it's irresponsible to fund it, then you take that thing out of the budget. Why would a library need additional money other than to pay utilities, staff wage, and new books? Besides new books, that's just operational cost and shouldn't need a tax increase.

I don't know the specific reason in this case, but buildings don't last forever so maintenance and renovations could have been part of the increase in cost.

Maintenance often gets deferred because there was never enough taxpayer money provided for it in the first place, until it becomes such a big problem that libraries and schools need to resort to ballot measures and municipal bonds.

There was probably not enough taxpayer funding of the library system in the first place, and eventually it became impossible to continue operations.