For Small Libraries, It May Be the Last Chapter

It is just a modest cinder-block building, a place where the works of Dashiell Hammett rub shoulders with Danielle Steele’s, but patrons of the tiny Live Oak Library see it as far more than just a government service.

To them, the library, on county property between the cities of Arcadia, Irwindale and Monrovia, is an irreplaceable resource.

But with county libraries facing a $23.5-million cut that could lead to closure of 43 of 87 facilities, their irreplaceable resource is about to be wiped out.

Starting next month, Live Oak and the 42 other libraries will close unless the Board of Supervisors or a wealthy philanthropist comes to their rescue, said Sue Cowen, public information officer for the County of Los Angeles public library system.

“We’re going to have to pull a rabbit out of a hat,” Cowen said. “We need $30 million to keep them open and that’s not even going to buy books.”

For Live Oak patrons, these closures will mean the loss of longtime librarian Brian Trygstad, a beloved local figure who has watched a generation grow up among his library’s stacks.

“I hate to say it, but I’ve seen the kids grow up and now they’re bringing back their kids,” said Trygstad, 47.

Trygstad, who has been with Live Oak for 13 years, said he owes this allegiance to running his tiny library more like a home than a book repository. With limited space and an ever-shrinking budget, Trygstad tries to keep the library stocked with the books and videotapes the patrons enjoy.

For Trygstad, the closures come as libraries, especially his branch, have seen a renaissance in public use and interest.

“This last year, even with no money for books, we circulated 125,000 just running . . . on what books and videotapes we had,” Trygstad said. That was three times greater than each of the previous three years.

To show the community’s support, Gail Sound, president of the Friends of Live Oak Library, is organizing a rally at the library Saturday.

Some library patrons would like to see the county do what the city of Pasadena did for its libraries.

In June, Pasadena voters passed a special library tax to circumvent the city’s library budget cutback. The new annual tax will cost homeowners $20, apartment dwellers $13 and commercial property owners $47 per parcel.

Library supporters are hopeful that a solution may come in the form of state Senate Bill 566, which has been approved by the Senate and was passed Wednesday by an Assembly committee.

The bill would allow local governments to pursue a benefit assessment tax. Unlike a property tax, a benefit assessment would be a fixed fee charged to single-family dwellings and commercial units.

If the Assembly passes the bill when the Legislature reconvenes in August and if Gov. Pete Wilson signs it, the county library system would have to ask the Board of Supervisors to initiate a complicated approval process.

Then the county library system would inform property owners of the estimated fee amounts, said Albert Tovar, a county library administrator. Officials believe the fee would be $20 to $80 a year.

Protests against the plan would be monitored, Tovar said.

“If we get more than 10% protests, then we have to take it to a vote within the areas served (by the county),” Tovar said. “But if we get less than 10% in protests, then we got it.”

At a county budget hearing Thursday, writer Ray Bradbury and Los Angeles poet Wanda Coleman were among speakers denouncing the proposed library closures.

Bradbury offered himself as a perfect example of a “library-educated person.”

“When we moved to Los Angeles in 1934 . . . I sold newspapers and went to the library three days a week,” Bradbury said. “I used to travel on the Red Cars to see what all the libraries were like. I never went to college but was completely dependent on what the libraries had to teach me.”

Coleman said libraries “are vital to the mental and psychological health of youth and an important element in reducing the amount of fear of our children.”