City Managers Devise Plan to Revamp County Library System

After months of often tenuous negotiations, a panel of seven Ventura County city managers has crafted a plan to revamp the way the financially troubled 15-branch county library system does business.

The proposal calls for further scaling back of the Library Services Agency’s overhead costs, and to use the savings to expand hours and give cities more financial and operational control of their own branch libraries. Fillmore, Camarillo, Moorpark, Port Hueneme, Simi Valley, Ojai and Ventura are part of the county system.

Richard Rowe, the agency’s interim director, said that while many county library employees would be reassigned to new jobs under the plan, layoffs are probable.

He said the number of layoffs would become clearer once labor union agreements and seniority rights are reviewed. The agency’s full-time staff--which once numbered 132--has already been cut in half over the last six years.

The city managers’ plan would allow libraries in Simi Valley and Camarillo and Foster Library in Ventura--the largest branches in the county system--to stay open 55 hours a week, while maintaining current operating hours at smaller branches.

“The good news is, amazingly enough, that the library district finally found out they could do what we told them they could be doing all along,” said Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton, who in recent months has proposed that the county system be broken up and that individual cities be left to run their own branches.

Whether his city supports the plan, Stratton said, depends on how much control it has over operating hours and book budgets.

Under the plan, a library advisory panel would be created, with one member of the Board of Supervisors and one member from each City Council. The panel would essentially be responsible for overseeing the library system, with the Board of Supervisors needing a four-fifths vote to override any decision the panel makes.

Property tax dollars would also stay in the cities where they are generated, rather than be poured into a county pool and redistributed. Property tax revenues collected in unincorporated areas would be used to support branches in Piru, Oak Park, El Rio, Meiners Oaks, Oak View and Saticoy.

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In addition, the plan calls for the Moorpark Library and the Wright Library in Ventura to stay open 40 hours per week; branches in Fillmore, Ojai, Oak Park and Port Hueneme to operate 24 hours weekly, and the Avenue branch in Ventura 19 hours. Neighborhood branches in Meiners Oaks, Oak View, Piru, Saticoy and El Rio would continue to be open 16 hours each week.

In the past, just 52% of the county library agency’s budget was used to operate the branches, according to the city managers’ report. The difference was spent on such support services as administration and book acquisitions.

Under the new plan, 70% of the budget would go directly into operations at the individual branches, nearly 8% to book acquisitions and the rest to support services, said Terry Dryer, an analyst in the county administrator’s office.

Supervisor Frank Schillo said the most important part of the proposal is seeing expanded hours and local control over libraries without further spending.

“I think it’s exciting,” he said of the plan. “The fact that [city managers] all came together was just nothing short of a miracle.”

Indeed, Ventura City Manager Donna Landeros said, but not without a few fights along the way.

“There was blood and guts all over the floor. It’s amazing we’re all still speaking to each other,” she said. “There were very passionate discussions, arguments, a little bit of pounding on the table.”

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Landeros had argued that Ventura property tax dollars were being unfairly used to subsidize libraries in smaller cities, which have a smaller tax base to draw from.

Unlike Simi Valley and Camarillo, which each have a single main library branch, Ventura was forced to split the 36 hours it was allocated by the county system over three branches, she said.

“The agreement we have among the managers really corrects the inequity for Ventura,” Landeros said.

The City Council is scheduled to consider the library plan at its meeting Monday night.

George Berg, spokesman for Save Our Libraries, a countywide coalition of library supporters, said he is hopeful that all seven city councils will embrace the plan. Members of the group will lobby each governing panel as well as the Board of Supervisors, he said.

“It amounts to revolution,” Berg said. “This is a compromise, and it’s an attempt to make the best system and the best libraries we can with an inadequate supply of money.”

Meanwhile, in another cost-saving measure, the county library agency will move its administrative headquarters today from a private building it leases in Ventura to the County Government Center.