Grant County voters recently did something rare in the solidly red Eastern Oregon county: pass a new tax.

The Grant County Court, equivalent to a county board of commissioners, greenlighted the formation of a library district on June 15, after local voters approved it by wide margins in the May primary. The decision came about a year after the court considered covering a $1.5 million budget deficit in part by cutting off funding for the county’s only library.

A campaign to save the library in John Day was led by a small group of community volunteers, including Stephaine Thompson.

Thompson said she and her husband were born and raised in Grant County. While their careers took them across the country, they decided to return in 2023 to raise their family.

She works for the local office of Child Care Resource & Referrals, an organization that supports the childcare workforce. She was alarmed when she heard the county was putting the library on the chopping block, both on behalf of her own kids and her clients.

Like many other rural counties, Grant County’s population is aging, and its number of youth is shrinking. Thompson worried that closing the library would only further those trends.

“We’re seeing a huge reduction in young families,” she said. “Our hospital has had troubles. Our schools have had troubles. We don’t want to give anyone a reason not to move here.”

Thompson helped form the Save Our Library Committee, a volunteer group that rallied hundreds of residents to oppose the library’s defunding at a series of public meetings.

But the committee realized that the library was unlikely to win in a budget battle with other county services, Thompson said. So, the group pivoted to finding a new source of funding: establishing a taxing district.

Thompson said a core group of eight volunteers met weekly, raising money to hire a consultant and conduct a feasibility study.

But as the committee readied a public campaign, Thompson said she knew it would be a tough sell in a county that typically rejects new taxes.

The John Day/Canyon City Parks and Recreation District put a bond on the ballot in the 2022 primary election to build a new public pool to replace the community’s 64-year-old facilities. The vote was a tie, meaning the bond failed under state law. Voters rejected a second attempt later that year by a narrow, but definitive, margin. Grant County’s only public pool has since been demolished.

The library district will collect 50 cents per $1,000 of assessed value on property taxes, according to an election notice. As its backers canvassed the county, Thompson said she did run into residents who were dead set against new taxes. But she also found herself pleasantly surprised by how many people supported the library.

“I think sometimes people feel like, in Eastern Oregon, their vote doesn’t matter,” she said. “In this instance, it does. We can impact the communities we live in.”

Grant County residents simultaneously created the Grant County Library District and voted in five board members to oversee it. Thompson said the current library director is meeting with the new board members to plan out the transition.

With the new source of funding, Thompson said the library district is planning a modest expansion of services, like being open for more hours and purchasing a bookmobile.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/21/voters-save-grant-county-only-library/