Ventura City Council Votes to Join New Library System

VENTURA — The city on Monday became the fifth of seven cities to approve a proposed new county library system that would give each community more say over how its local branches are run.

The new Ventura County Free Library System has been approved by Simi Valley, Camarillo, Ojai and Fillmore.

The Moorpark City Council will consider the agreement Wednesday, and the Port Hueneme City Council will consider it Jan. 7.

“Returning local control of the libraries to the cities is a great thing,” said Mayor Jim Friedman, who will serve as the city’s representative on a board overseeing the system. “We can be a lot more responsive to the need of our residents.”

The council voted Monday night to approve the library plan.

The plan resulted from months of sometimes strained talks between county officials and managers of the seven cities remaining in the system about how to best restructure the beleaguered 15-branch system.

Officials in Ventura and Simi Valley thought the county library system had become so poorly managed and underfunded that they threatened to secede from the county system and take their tax dollars with them. Some cities, such as Thousand Oaks and Oxnard, previously withdrew and now maintain independent libraries.

The new Ventura County Free Library System plans to give cities more authority over how their branches are run. It tries to scale back administrative costs and funnel the savings to the branches to expand hours and collections.

Under the new system, an eight-member panel made up of a representative from each city, and the Board of Supervisors, will make decisions on the library system’s budget and staffing.

No decision by the oversight panel can be overridden without a four-fifths vote by the Board of Supervisors.

If cities do not see substantial improvement, the agreement permits them to withdraw from the system with a 30-day notice.

The Board of Supervisors will consider the agreement today. The first meeting of the new panel will be scheduled for January.

In a related vote, the Ventura City Council approved the Franklin Project--a plan to place 11 new computers in the city’s E.P. Foster Library and hook them up to the Internet by Jan. 1.