WESTSIDE COVER STORY : Unequal Stacks : Private funding helped Brentwood build a new library. Other facilities, particularly those that depend on dwindling L.A. County resources, have not been so fortunate.

The people of Brentwood have written their own happy ending to a long saga over the local public library. As it happens, most of the writing came in the form of signatures on personal checks.

This afternoon, the ribbon will be cut on the $2.4-million, 10,400-square-foot Donald Bruce Kaufman Brentwood branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. After an 11-year struggle, residents of the affluent community have achieved victory in an era of financial hardship for many local governments.

Brentwood residents, or at least 1,950 of them, paid for almost all of their new library--and not just through taxes.

“We needed a library and we got a library,” said Brentwood philanthropist Glorya Kaufman, who led the fund-raising campaign by writing the biggest checks--totaling well over $1 million. Her generosity inspired the Board of Library Commissioners to name the edifice after her late husband. “I think it’s wonderful when people get together and do things like this.”

Not all Westside communities are as fortunate as Brentwood.

In Marina del Rey, for instance, nothing will happen at the local library today--or tomorrow or the next day either. That’s because the Marina library can afford to open only on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

At the Malibu library, patrons have become fed up as waiting lists for bestsellers have ballooned to several hundred names because the library has had no money for new books in over a year.

“People say, ‘Oh, well, I guess I’ll go out and buy it,’ ” said Malibu librarian Elaine Adler. “And then I say, ‘Great. After you finish reading it, would you mind donating it to us?’ ”

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Such is the feast-or-famine world of community libraries, where a branch’s quality, and perhaps its existence, can depend more on what system it belongs to and how much private support it garners than on how badly the community might need its services.

People who live within the Los Angeles city limits enjoy a library system that, one way or another, has been finding enough cash of late to improve or rebuild buildings, buy materials and fill long-vacant positions. People who live in nearby cities or unincorporated areas, meanwhile, are stuck with a county library system that can barely afford to stay open, let alone buy new books.

Statistics sketch part of the story: The city library system, which has 64 branches, has an operating budget of $36.7 million this year, an increase of almost 7% over last year. The county system, meanwhile, with 87 branches, has an operating budget of $47.6 million, down 26% from the $64.5 million of the previous fiscal year.

Library experts say the result is more than some inconvenienced book-lovers. Because children using local libraries to prepare homework assignments become exposed to literature there, library financial problems could affect the literacy of future generations.

“We’re not able to go out into the schools like we used to and blow our own horn and get kids to read,” Adler said.

The Brentwood branch at 11820 San Vicente Blvd. is just one of 25 Los Angeles city library branches undergoing major rebuilding or renovation projects, in most cases thanks to a $53.4-million bond issue passed by voters in 1989.

Workers have begun reinforcing and expanding the John C. Fremont branch at 6121 Melrose Ave. in Hollywood. Contracting bids are being taken on a new, 10,500-square-foot Robertson branch, between Beverly Hills and Palms, due to replace the old building at 1719 S. Robertson Blvd.

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In Venice, construction is about half-finished on a new branch at 501 S. Venice Blvd. The 64-year-old former building at 610 California Ave. was deemed too small and not up to seismic codes. (Old branches designated as historically important will be repaired and put to some other community use. Such aged buildings are often unsuitable for library use, city officials say, because of unusually strict seismic codes for libraries partly as a result of concerns that stacks might fall during a quake.)

Although city libraries are holding their own, if not thriving, the 87 Los Angeles County Library branches are languishing, victims of an $11-million library department budget shortfall that shows no signs of abating. County officials say they may have to close as many as half of the branches in the system unless they can raise enough money by next month.

Klein and others traced the county libraries’ immediate problems to 1993, when Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature shifted $2.2 billion of property tax revenue to schools to balance the state budget. Since the Los Angeles County system relies heavily on property taxes, it lost $29.4 million in operating revenue overnight.

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As a result, county libraries have recently laid off 370 full- and part-time workers, cut service hours by 65% and halted all purchases of new books, magazines and tapes. On the Westside, branches in Culver City, Malibu, Marina del Rey and West Hollywood are still reeling from the changes--and hoping the future doesn’t bring worse news.

“It’s almost unbelievable that you have to think about the library remaining open in this day and age,” said Greg Wenger, president of the Marina Foundation, a nonprofit residents’ group in Marina del Rey. With the Marina library open just two days a week, Wenger said, many residents have resorted to treating a local bookstore as a de facto library, browsing through books and magazines there for hours.

In West Hollywood, “you go into the library now and it looks naked,” said activist Roslyn Krause, who has complained to that community’s City Council about the local county library branch. “It’s so disgraceful.”

The deeper problem for the county, however, lies in the complicated history of state finance since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, the property tax relief initiative, said UCLA economics professor Werner Z. Hirsch.

In the first few years following passage, Sacramento lawmakers reassured county governments that the state would pick up the funding slack for expensive mandates such as health and welfare, Hirsch said. But as state monies dried up during the recession, more and more mandates were passed back to the counties. As a result, overwhelmed counties have been forced to put libraries on the back burner, at least temporarily.

County library officials are now hoping for relief in the form of a bill sponsored by state Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) that would allow public libraries to form special assessment districts to raise operating funds (a similar bill was vetoed last year by the governor). Meanwhile, libraries have mounted ambitious private fund-raising efforts to keep branches open. Groups that support libraries have been holding book sales. Volunteers are working for little else than the pleasure of being near books.

Brentwood faces no such problem. In fact, its construction project was completed far ahead of the other city branches slated for improvements.

Brentwood residents decided over a decade ago that their 3,500-square-foot branch was too small and should be enlarged or rebuilt--if not with city funds, then with their own.

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Led by Kaufman, who was inspired to build the library after the 1983 death of her husband in a plane crash. Donald Bruce Kaufman was an avid reader who built a construction firm into an international company, the Westwood-based Kaufman & Broad Home Corp. Brentwood residents embarked on an 11-year odyssey to raise money and gain city approval for the project.

Kaufman said the private effort was necessary--at least before the 1989 bond issue virtually guaranteed branch library reconstruction--because the community was far too wealthy to qualify for a library grant from any government agency. No bond money was used for the Brentwood branch because by then hundreds of thousands of dollars had already been secured from private sources, plus another $350,000 from the city’s General Fund.

“We were never on the list to get a new library,” Kaufman said during an interview at her hilltop estate in Mandeville Canyon. “The poorer sections feel their community needs a library, and we would never have gotten a bond.”

Robert G. Reagan, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Public Library, agreed that a lot of government grants for libraries in disadvantaged areas “require an economic level certainly lower than that in Brentwood.”

Kaufman and other Brentwood donors believed that the city should contribute at least nominally to the project. So in 1988--after the proposed branch had already been pledged more than $600,000 from Kaufman alone--the Los Angeles City Council ponied up its $350,000.

This news did not sit well with other communities, which were making do with old or temporary library buildings. Activists complained that Brentwood was receiving preferential treatment because of its rich citizens, a perception that lingers to this day.

“The distribution of advantages in Los Angeles follows very closely the neighborhoods of big campaign contributors,” contended Jeb Brighouse, a community activist in the Echo Park neighborhood. The Echo Park branch library has been housed in temporary quarters since the 1971 Sylmar earthquake. “Money talks. Brentwood talks, and Echo Park is silent.”

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The city has just finished taking bids for a new Echo Park branch, but no ground has been broken, Reagan said, adding that it typically takes seven years to build a new library--from securing financing to the opening.

“Very often there is a perceived disparity among communities (for public work projects), but I can say, in the library department, that is really not true,” said Fontayne Holmes, assistant director of branches for the Los Angeles Public Library. “There is equitable distribution of library funds throughout the city. Brentwood receives the same funds as everyone else.”

“First you feed your child, then you feed your neighbor’s child,” Kaufman said. “Rich people pay taxes too. Those taxes pay for bonds, and those bonds pay for facilities elsewhere.”

Yet the attention of Kaufman and her fellow donors is now focused on the public building they financed with relatively little city help. The new Brentwood branch, a modern, white stucco building with a handsome dome skylight, will include a bookstore, a children’s area, a balcony reading lounge, a meeting room and computer terminals. There will be shelving for 33,000 volumes.

“We were really planning on a small expansion (at first),” said Helen Stevenson, president of the Friends of the Brentwood Branch Library. “We never dreamed we’d be this fortunate.”

Library Projects

While Los Angeles city libraries are remodeling or rebuilding. . .

* Brentwood, 11820 San Vicente Blvd.: New $2.4-million library opens today.

* Fremont, 6121 Melrose Ave.: Major remodeling project began in April.

* Memorial, 4625 W. Olympic Blvd.: Ground broken on major expansion last month.

* Robertson, 1719 S. Robertson Blvd.: Contractors’ bids are now being taken for all-new building.

* Venice, 501 S. Venice Blvd.: About midway through construction on brand-new, 10,500-square-foot library.

* Washington Irving, 4313 W. Washington Blvd.: Final city review under way on proposed new library building.

. . . County libraries are languishing.

* Culver City, 4975 Overland Ave.: Has cut hours in half the past two years.

* Malibu, 23519 W. Civic Center Way: Private money may be needed to keep facility open.

* Marina del Rey, 4533 Admiralty Way: Open only two days a week, down from seven days just two years ago.

* West Hollywood, 715 N. San Vicente: City officials have discussed replacing with municipal library.