Official Urges Direct Talks With County on Libraries

Saying she wants to save time, Ventura City Manager Donna Landeros is recommending that the city go directly to county library officials to negotiate for better library services instead of joining a committee of other cities set up to study countywide library policies.

A library consultant, hired by the city to assess Ventura’s libraries and define what residents want from their libraries, has recommended that Ventura secede from the county library system and form its own independent city library.

Rather than break entirely from the county--or join other cities in a proposed implementation committee--Landeros said Ventura should proceed with its own negotiations over the services, programs and hours residents say they want from local libraries.

“I don’t think it is in our best interest to be on the implementation committee when we don’t know what authority the county is going to grant the committee,” Landeros said. “I don’t want to be negotiating on two fronts--with the smaller cities and the county.”

One council member who sits on the city’s library steering committee agreed.

“We are not willing to waste our time in an implementation process that has no teeth, and no authority,” said Councilman Jim Friedman. “Especially if they are going to discuss things among themselves and have the Board of Supervisors do what they want to do anyway.”

On Monday night, the City Council will discuss the fate of Ventura’s libraries.

Distilling San Francisco-based Beverley Simmons’ final 81-page library report and its 18-page appendix to two pages, Landeros lays out a “Library Vision for Ventura” that she intends to present to the county.

She calls libraries a “symbol of civic pride” and outlines the library system that a group of 250 Ventura citizens interviewed by Simmons has envisioned.

It would be a library system with improved access to library services, better services, stable resources, responsiveness to community needs, accountability to city input and the flexibility to allow for continual improvement.

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Landeros has set a 60-day deadline to negotiate independently with the county and come back with a recommendation for council consideration.

She said the point of the negotiations is to move the process into fast forward and to find out what authority the county would be willing to grant cities under new organization.

Ventura is also concerned about what the voting structure might be under a library system restructuring, Landeros said. Her preference, she said, would be weighted voting that would reflect Ventura’s population. Ventura has 20% of the total population served by the county library system, but under an initial proposal, Ventura would get onlyone vote out of nine.

Landeros’ recommendation shocked one member of the seven-member San Buenaventura Library Advisory Board, which has urged the city to look hard at remaining within the county system. The board sent its own recommendations to City Council members, asking the city to send a representative to the implementation committee.

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George Tillquist, who drafted the board’s recommendations, said he hates to see Ventura go ahead without the rest of the cities in the county, but he is not opposed to the city talking with the county.

“This is one step on the road we are recommending,” he said. “The direction is right.”

According to Library Services Agency Executive Director Dixie Adeniran, the implementation committee will serve as the informal policymaking board for the Library Services Agency. She conceded that the committee will not have any formal powers, but said it will wield considerable influence.

“I believe there is a strong commitment from the Board of Supervisors that this implementation committee will have delegated policymaking authority,” Adeniran said. “I believe they are very serious about soliciting the input of cities . . . allowing for a much greater role in decision making for the local communities.”

Adeniran said Supervisors Frank Schillo and Cathy Long, as well as representatives from every other city served by the county Library Services Agency except Ventura, have already agreed to send a representative to the first committee meeting Thursday night.

Long said she will not rule out negotiating with Ventura independently but hopes Ventura will take part in the committee meeting.

“I hope they would reconsider and sit at the table with us,” she said.

Some of those involved in the effort to solve the county’s library problems fear that if Ventura withdraws from a city advisory committee, Simi Valley might follow. They have warned that if both leave, the county system could crumble.

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On Thursday night, Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton and City Manager Mike Sedello met with Friedman and Landeros. Friedman said Ventura and Simi Valley are definitely seeing eye to eye on the subject of libraries, and both cities are ready to work together to make something happen.

At this point, many of the city’s most avid library supporters just want Ventura to move quickly to end the crisis. They have argued that Ventura’s library funding problems have dragged on too long already, and every day that passes makes Ventura’s collections a little more outdated, and library users a little more frustrated.

Keith Burns, who runs Books on Main, located less than a block away from E.P. Foster Library, described a scene he sees played out every Friday afternoon.

“Any minute I’m expecting a parent and a child to come through my door in tears--needing a book from the library to write a report for Monday,” he says. “But it’s closed.”

The longer that cycle goes on, he said, the harder it will be to get libraries back to where they need to be. People forget what good libraries are.

Burns advocates remaining within the county system, saying the city will lose out on many support services should it choose to withdraw. But he said he will support any action that will stop Ventura’s library crisis from deepening.

“We are still crying about the fact that someone burned down the Alexandria library 2,000 years ago,” he said. “In Ventura we see the flame of apathy destroying our libraries.” The City Council will meet at City Hall, 501 Poli St., on Monday at 7 p.m.