Santa Clarita officials are polling residents about a parcel tax to support the city library system as the city and the county battle over library taxes.

The poll, which began last week, will ask questions to about 400 people. Among those questions: Would they support a replacement library parcel tax?

The Santa Clarita City Council voted in August to withdraw from the county library system and set up its own city library system.

City officials said at the time — and continue to say — that the existing parcel tax paid by city residents for county library services would be available to the new city library.

However, county officials see it differently.

“You can’t apply the county tax (to the city), because it’s not what the voters voted on,” Los Angeles County deputy counsel Jill Jones said in November.

“You can’t just change the purpose of an election ... years ago,” Jones said.

If the city moved forward with a new ballot measure, it would only be to reform the tax to make it more equitable, said Darren Hernandez, deputy city manager for Santa Clarita.

“We do not need to pass a ballot measure to collect the special library tax,” Hernandez said. “We would need a ballot measure to restructure the existing tax.”

The city is paying political consulting firm Godbe Research about $20,000 to conduct the poll, Hernandez said.

Currently, the special library tax collected by the county charges every landowner a flat $28 annual rate per parcel. Santa Clarita voters approved the tax in 1997.

Under a revamped special tax, the dollar amount would be based on each property’s size and other factors, Hernandez said.

City officials say they will be able to begin levying the existing parcel tax on July 1, 2011, when the city takes over operations of the Canyon Country, Valencia and Newhall libraries within city limits.

City attorneys say that all that is needed to do so is a resolution passed by the Santa Clarita City Council.

Hernandez maintained the city’s position that it will be able to collect the tax without passing a new measure.

The average Santa Clarita homeowner would likely pay less than the $28 per year, while owners of larger or commercial properties would pay more, he said.

Hernandez did not have an estimate on what the average homeowner would pay instead of the $28, nor did he have an estimate on whether the total collected by the city would amount to more or less than the current $1.5 million annually that the county collects from Santa Clarita taxpayers.

“At this point, it is only research,” Herna