BATON ROUGE — Two East Baton Rouge Parish metro councilmembers held a public meeting discussing Mayor-President Sid Edwards' 10-year tax proposal Tuesday evening. 

District 3's Rowdy Gaudet and District 9's Dwight Hudson held the meeting at Acacia Church as they opened the floor to citizens' concerns and opinions about the proposal, which will extend an existing 9.80-mill parish-wide tax that is currently dedicated to public libraries and repurpose it for general parish operations.

The plan would also rededicate $114 million from library tax proceeds to facilitate economic growth and make improvements to roads and drainage. Edwards met with the media earlier Tuesday morning to discuss his parish-wide "Revive BR" plan and the library budget reallocation.  

During the meeting officials from the mayor-president's office proposed giving the library system $38 million a year, which Chief Administrative Officer Charlie Davis says is enough to run a well functioning library. 

"We can have an incredible library system on $38 million dollars a year. To put that in comparison, we spend less than $20 million on the department that maintains roads and drainage systems across the entire city-parish," he said.

But some guests that spoke out during the meeting were not in agreeance with taking any funds altogether.

"Once that money goes into the general fund, it's into a black hole," an attendee said.

"You're mandating all these little things, but in exchange you're taking away the strongest parts in our community," another attendee said.

In 2018, voters approved a 10 year property tax for mental health and a 30 year sales tax towards infrastructure, which equates to $30 million per year, which begs the question on why the money is needed.

"We have to have a balanced budget which means as we approach more and more budget cuts, we have to reallocate our resources," Chief Administrative Officer Charlie Davis said.

Davis says although the money can be reallocated, according to the Legislature Auditor of of Louisiana, the library has $104 million in surplus funds, which he says can be utilized towards other projects.

"We already don't have enough money to solve our infrastructure problems. We don't have enough money to solve our crime problems. So because we're over funding the library system, that's why there is $104 million left over," he said.

But some residents think the claims of a surplus fund is not a valid reason rededicate the funds. 

"They're is no library surplus, they're the funds they haven't spent yet from the previous millage," an attendee said.

"The legislative auditor of the state of Louisiana is the authoritative source on what a surplus is. They ruled that this is a surplus," Executive Director of the Mayor-President's Office Mason Batts said.