Mission Viejo Checking Out Plan for Its Own Library

Tired of what City Councilman Robert D. Breton called Wednesday a “miserable little library” with a “Flintstones book collection,” the city is completing its plans to leave the Orange County Public Library system and build its own $6-million facility.

In a discussion this week, the council settled on leaving the county system by year’s end, becoming the first city in Orange County to do so.

“The timing is right,” Mayor Susan Withrow said. “It’s important for Mission Viejo at this time to consider providing increased library services.”

What’s promising to make the move possible is a land swap under negotiation with the Mission Viejo Co. and Staubach Co. under which the city would get three acres near the new library site in exchange for city-owned land near City Hall.

The city would make enough profit under the exchange to afford to build a new library that would replace the current 9,000-square-foot library on Chrisanta Drive that contains about 87,000 volumes and is open 31 hours a week.

City officials envision a 25,000-square-foot facility in the center of town on La Paz Road, open 65 hours a week, with at least 40 special programs and 120,000 to 150,000 volumes.

Mission Viejo is trying to finalize an agreement with the county to keep the $970,000 the city pays in property taxes for library services in order to meet operating costs for the new library, Breton said.

The council has been discussing ways to fund the estimated $1.6 million it would take to run the library annually, including volunteer programs and offering voters the option of paying a little extra tax each year for an “information superhighway” system--CD-ROM, Internet and Lexis/Nexis, for example--to be built in the new library.

The county expressed restrained support for Mission Viejo.

“We hope that while the City Council clearly wants to obtain more control over the quality . . . we could continue to cooperate with them on a contract basis,” said John Adams, the county librarian. “Everybody involved ultimately wants to see the best quality library service. If Mission Viejo is able to devote greater resources . . . then I certainly think it’s a good decision.”

He said it was his understanding that the city and county are still talking about the city’s proposed departure from the library system. But city officials seemed certain about the inevitability of the move.

“The handwriting’s on the wall,” Breton said.