Homeless, Tiny Saticoy Library Struggles for Some Attention : Services: Some say the facility is Ventura County’s most neglected. It operates from a community center meeting room.

Three afternoons a week, a lone librarian lines up four carts in the middle of a colorless meeting room, sets up a portable scanner, and the Saticoy Library is open.

The library, the smallest branch in the Ventura County Library system, is also the most neglected, neighborhood residents say.

Nearly three years after its former site was demolished, the Saticoy Library is still homeless. At one point, it was operating out of a van at a local park. Last year, service was cut off for two months during summer. Now it operates from a meeting room at the Saticoy Community Center on Violeta Street, where the old library once stood.

“They forget about us out here,” said Lark Stevens, who has been bringing her children to the various sites for four years. “We need a library. They made lots of promises, but we don’t have a permanent library yet.”

When the Saticoy Library was razed three years ago, county library officials said they anticipated opening a new branch by June, 1991.

But first there was a problem with water hookups. Then the permitting process was delayed. Now library officials say they have selected a site on East Violeta Street, but need about $150,000 to complete the project, and they do not know when it will be completed.

“We’ve hit one roadblock after another,” said Donna Roff, assistant manager of community libraries for the county. “It’s very discouraging. Saticoy needs their library and we’re doing the best we can.”

The best is a small, austere, harshly lit meeting room in the Saticoy Community Center.

On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, librarian Evelyn Cuevas hauls out four book carts from storage and sets them up in the meeting room.

One cart has nonfiction books, one has fiction, one geared for children and the last cart is filled with Spanish books. Most of the library’s volumes are in storage, and patrons have only about 1,000 books to choose from. The magazine selection is meager, bestsellers are scarce and few books on tape are available.

Although Cuevas says “we have a little bit of everything here,” she concedes that her library is not situated in the best of places. The room, which is about 700 square feet, has all the ambience of a hospital ward.

No posters or decorations are allowed on the white walls. No carpet or rugs are available for children to sit on during storytelling hour. No computer is handy for patrons to look up books. Also, the room frequently is poorly heated, Cuevas said, and few patrons stay very long.

“It is very sterile,” she said. “We can’t put anything on the walls, so we try to decorate the carts.”

The room’s seven long white tables and numerous brown metal chairs do not appeal to her young patrons, Cuevas said.

“The children don’t stay long to do their homework,” she said. “We encourage them to stay, but many times they don’t.”

The Saticoy Library, one of the county’s oldest, has been in existence since 1919. At one time, there were two branches, which were consolidated into a single library in 1962.

Library officials say the Saticoy branch has the smallest collection and the lowest circulation of any library in the county.

Before the library moved to the community center last September, it was operated solely out of the bookmobile, a roving van that came to Saticoy Park two afternoons a week.

When the van broke down in July, two months passed before the library was moved to the community center.

Cuevas said the bookmobile offered a larger selection of books, and while she rotates different books on her carts, her patrons sometimes complain about reading the same books over and over. Most of the library’s 8,000-volume collection is in storage, she said.

“It could be a lot bigger,” said Jodi Bradley, who brought her 7-year-old son Jimmy to the tiny facility. “A lot of these books here are looking familiar. He’ll go through them soon.”

Vera Jetton, a longtime library patron, said part of the problem is that Saticoy residents have not been pestering their elected officials to get a permanent library faster.

“It’s a poor area, and I don’t think the people here have contacted the politicians too much,” Jetton said.

Jetton said Saticoy in particular is in dire need of a larger library because many of the poorer residents do not have cars and cannot travel west to Ventura, where larger libraries are available.

Other libraries in the county have received attention after lobbying by elected officials and residents. The Ventura Avenue Library was on the verge of shutting down before a group of residents and the Ventura City Council persuaded library officials to let it remain open. Just two years ago, after heavy lobbying, Supervisor Vicky Howard got her fellow board members to approve an allocation of $260,000 in emergency funds to more than double the size of the Moorpark Library, which is in her district.

Jetton, president of the Parent-Teacher Assn. at Saticoy Elementary School, said her community has been overlooked.

“Every time they say they’re going to do something, they come up with an excuse not to do it,” Jetton said.

But county library officials say the Saticoy Library is a high priority. They are applying for federal grants for the library, and are hopeful of getting a permanent site eventually, they say.

Although a lease has been negotiated for the site on East Violeta Street, the library agency does not have the money to put in a parking lot, move a modular building to the site and install plumbing and utilities in the building, Roff said.

“It’s a big priority that we get it going,” Roff said. “But we had a tremendous cut in budget and services all over.”

The Ventura County Library Services Agency incurred $1.7 million in budget cuts this fiscal year. About 45 full-time employees and all 75 part-time workers received layoff notices, and all 16 libraries scaled back on staff members and number of hours open.

Cuevas, who has been the Saticoy librarian since 1985, said she is grateful at least to have a temporary facility to reach out to hungry young minds.

Although many patrons disappeared after the bookmobile broke down, they have gradually been finding the new site again, Cuevas said.

“It’s not much, but at least it’s something.”