Tangled Branches : Library Friends Part as Foes in Dash to Raise Funds in Agoura Hills, Westlake Village

Los Angeles County’s hope of closing the book on a library dispute in the Las Virgenes area has been set back by a feud between residents of Agoura Hills and Westlake Village.

Library supporters from the two cities are racing to be the first to raise money for new branches that county officials have promised to build in each community.

The county announced the multiple-library plan last month with an eye toward ending competition between the cities over where a new Las Virgenes regional library would be built.

Officials said they were authorizing small branches for Agoura Hills and Westlake Village, as well as a third one for Calabasas, rather than a single, supermarket-sized library for the 80-square-mile region.

But, in disclosing the three-way plan at a Dec. 9 Agoura Hills City Council meeting, county Librarian Linda Crismond said it would be up to the cities and area residents to line up construction financing for each of the new branches.

Arguments Ensue

That triggered a noisy argument among members of the 10-year-old Friends of the Las Virgenes Library, who continued to squabble as they spilled out of the council chambers that night. The bad feelings have gone unchecked ever since.

The debate so far has cost the two communities the $12,000 the 100-member group has raised for library construction.

It also has led to a split among book lovers that may lead to four separate citizen groups soliciting library funds along the 15-mile-long Ventura Freeway corridor between Woodland Hills and Thousand Oaks.

‘Confrontations and Complications’

“It’s led to confrontations and complications,” said Sy Rimer, a Las Virgenes branch librarian who runs the county’s undersized, 16-year-old regional library in an Agoura Hills storefront.

“I’m sorry that they all couldn’t have worked together. I’m saddened by that.”

Library officials say the dispute may detract from a unified fund-raising effort needed for the three libraries.

Crismond has told Las Virgenes-area leaders that she is “throwing the ball into your court” to raise the nearly $7 million to build the three new branches. The county has no funds available for library construction, she said.

She has estimated that the new libraries will cost about $125 a square foot to build--meaning about $3.8 million for the proposed 30,000-square-foot Agoura Hills branch, $1.9 million for the 15,000-square-foot facility in Westlake Village and $1.2 million for the 10,000-square-foot branch in Calabasas.

City officials in Westlake Village and Agoura Hills hope to cover most of their costs with federal grants and other government funds. But they say they also will look to residents and local companies for help.

Some Agoura Hills city leaders have alleged that Friends of the Las Virgenes Library favors the Westlake Village branch with its solicitations.

Brochure Is Criticized

Agoura Hills City Councilwoman Darlene McBane charged last month that a new fund-raising brochure distributed by the group shortchanges her city’s future branch while boosting Westlake Village’s. The brochure notes that only one site has been donated, the one in Westlake Village.

“You could almost make a case that funds are being solicited under false pretenses” for Westlake Village, McBane said.

Agoura Hills resident Fran Foster, a member of Friends of the Las Virgenes Library, said she asked Agoura Hills City Atty. Gregory Stepanicich to intercede when it appeared that the group might channel the cash it has raised thus far into the Westlake project.

She said Stepanicich then examined the organization’s charter and found that the $12,000 it raised could be spent only for a “Las Virgenes” library. The money could not be used for construction in either Westlake or Agoura Hills.

“There are people on the Friends board from Westlake with an allegiance to Westlake,” Foster said. “I think it’s a shame this sort of thing has come about. We are all going to be hurt by it.”

Foster predicted that the fight for funds will polarize people in the Las Virgenes area.

“Once we begin to compete for the funds out here, we’re going to have people not contributing who normally would. There is just an X amount of resources out here,” she said.

Friends of the Library President Jim Anderson, who lives in Westlake Village, denied that his group is biased.

Anderson said the organization, which he has headed for three years, has met its goal of drawing the county’s attention to the need for expanded library facilities in the Las Virgenes area.

A “Friends of the Westlake Village Library” group is being formed, he said, and will start raising Westlake Village construction money from scratch.

As for fund-raising for Agoura’s new branch: “You’re going to have to ask people in Agoura Hills. Some on the City Council there have asked us to stay out of the way,” Anderson said.

Support Groups to Form

Rimer, the Las Virgenes branch librarian, said an Agoura Hills library support group probably will be started soon. A “Friends of the Calabasas Library” likewise will be started when the time comes to build that community’s branch library on a developer-donated site near the Ventura Freeway’s Lost Hills Road exit, he said.

Rimer said a scaled-down Friends of the Las Virgenes Library will continue supporting his branch while the new groups raise construction cash for the Agoura Hills and Westlake Village branches.

A developer is donating an Agoura Road site for the Westlake Village branch. Agoura Hills city officials are considering using part of Chumash Park off Argos Street for their library.

Rimer said he will use the $12,000 collected so far by Anderson’s group to buy equipment for his branch, such as children’s seating cushions, loanable computer software and a compact-disc player.

In the meantime, Rimer said, he is waiting to see if the Las Virgenes libraries have enough friends to go around.