County Issue / City Control of Libraries : Angered by severe cuts in the budget and operating hours of the Ventura County library system, the cities of Moorpark and Simi Valley are considering taking over the operation of their library branches. Would city control lead to better library services?

Dixie Adeniran, Director, Ventura County Library Services Agency

Services have been impacted because of the hard hit that the county, and in particular the libraries, took as the state made the decision about its budget for 1993-94. It shifted special district augmentation funds to schools. In addition it shifted a portion of the historic property tax to balance the state budget. Because of those shifts, the county library system has lost, over the last two years, 34% of its operating budget, 42% of its regular full-time staff positions, 63% of its extra-help staff budget and almost 50% of its books and materials budget. If cities are going to establish independent libraries they will need to undertake the costs of all of those support services--cataloguing, acquisitions, materials processing, automated circulation control, automated public catalogues, inter-library loans and many etceteras. The library is under instruction of the (Ventura County) Board of Supervisors to report Aug. 17 with a plan to contact cities and school districts to determine whether we can work together to improve library services.

*

Greg Stratton, Mayor, City of Simi Valley

We understand that the budget has been cut, but we think the 20% cut in the budget which translated into a 50% cut in hours was not the right way to do it. We need to have more control over the trade-offs of depth of programs versus operating hours. If the library district can’t give us those options, we need to explore other methods of control, including operating the library or contracting with the library district for the level of services. I think average citizens would just like the doors open so that they can get in and do their studying and do their own research and check out books. The head of the library district was very concerned that they wouldn’t have fully staffed reference desks staffed by librarians who could answer all the questions and so on. But for the cost of one librarian we could keep the library open another 14 hours a week. That was a trade-off that I think people would understand, if there wasn’t always a full-fledged librarian at the reference desk if that meant the library could stay open.

*

Vicky Howard, Ventura County supervisor

While traditionally the county has had the library services for most of the cities, it’s not a mandate. When the state cut back on money--completely took away the special district funding for the library--we did, knowing how important libraries are, put General Fund revenues into library services. It is something we cannot continue to do. Having multiple administrations such as would happen with individual cities is not cost-effective. Probably the most cost-effective way is to leave the libraries within the county. However, if we do not have funds for the libraries and the cities, who have not been hurt as badly, do have funds to provide for library services, I would certainly recommend that they take over the libraries. I would remind everybody that, unlike other counties, we have not closed a single library and we will do everything that we can to increase library hours. Right now, the school districts’ needs are being funded ahead of everybody else. I think it may be very important that the school districts look at their responsibilities to assist in providing library service.

*

Paul Lawrason, Mayor, City of Moorpark

Without question they could, depending on a number of factors. We haven’t received enough information from library services to determine what our share has been in terms of funding, and how that funding is utilized in the operation of our local branch. About $300,000 a year goes to the library district out of our city. But I can’t walk into our small library, which is nice and compact and certainly does a nice job for the community on a 40-hour-a-week schedule, and envision a $300,000 library. I don’t think we’re getting value received for that amount of money. Twenty hours a week is very insufficient in providing for students and the elderly and other major users of the system. From the public, we’re getting a lot of support: ‘If that’s what it takes to get the attention of our county and get our library services back to the level that we really deserve and are paying for, then keep it up. We are suffering from a double whammy. We were, in effect, disenfranchised from using the Thousand Oaks library when they made that decision last year on the $55 fee (for non-residents).

*

Martha Lepine, President, Moorpark Friends of the Library

I know many people are angered by it. But we personally are not really angered. We’re more saddened by the cuts. I’m not sure whether city control means we would have a better library. Thousand Oaks has a beautiful library and that’s under city control. Santa Paula has a city library and they are having a lot of trouble keeping their library open even the same number of hours as us. So there’s a success story in Thousand Oaks, and then there’s Santa Paula which has taken that step and they’re having a lot of problems. If we had a lot of community support, it probably would work. I’m not sure that in Moorpark our community has proven that a city library would work. This would probably be a good year to see just how much support we can get for our library, and could tell us whether city control would work. We think there are a lot of people in Moorpark who don’t realize just how much they have been cut back and won’t realize it until school starts and they’ll start to use it again.