BATON ROUGE - Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sid Edwards wants to cut taxes and give police a raise by taking money from the public library system.

Edwards said the library has a "budget surplus" from "years of overtaxation of citizens."

The city-parish 2025 budget indicates that the library system ended 2023 with a fund balance of just over $116 million. That year, the library took in more than $62 million and spent just over $56 million.

"I guess I could have chosen a lot of things, you know? I just looked at the surplus," Mayor-President Sid Edwards said.

Edwards' plan would require a public vote to shift the money.

"We're not out to hurt libraries, matter of fact, we have a commitment to have the best-funded libraries in the state of Louisiana," Edwards said.

Under his proposal, a city-parish millage would drop from 11.1 mills to 9.8 mills, which Edwards says would be the largest tax cut in two decades. The plan would also raise the average pay of Baton Rouge police officers from $40,900 to $58,000.

Additional funding will also be allocated for "improvements to economic development and critical infrastructure," and each councilmember will also receive funding for their district for special projects, according to a press release from Edwards' office.

"Careful consideration has been made to ensure that we will maintain the best publicly-funded library system in the state," the press release quoted Edwards as saying. "I am looking forward to working with the EBR Metro Council to better prioritize how the city-parish spends valuable taxpayer money.”

Mary Stein, the assistant director at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library, disproved of the plan.

"People think that the money we have put aside in fund balance is a surplus, that is incorrect. the money we have put aside in surplus is next year's entire budget," Stein said. "It's the money we've collected over time to fund the Baker renovation, the Zachary renovation."

Stein said the library system has its own proposal it plans to present at Wednesday's Metro Council meeting. That proposal includes reducing the property tax from 11.1 to 10.5.

"I'm going to have to tell the people in Baker, Central, Zachary, Delmont, we can keep your branches open seven days a week, but you're not getting that new roof," Stein said.

The mayor's office hopes the Metro Council will approve the proposal in March and it could be on the ballot for a public vote in October.