Audit Suggests Reorganizing of Library Staffs : Services: Study finds hours could increase by 45% without spending more. It also says managers are slow to collect fines.

Without spending an extra dime, Ventura County could increase library operating hours 45% by reorganizing staff and using more volunteers, a county auditor’s report released Thursday shows.

Auditor-Controller Thomas O. Mahon also suggests in the audit that managers in the Library Services Agency have been sloppy about keeping records of donations and are slow to collect fines.

Those are among the major findings in a four-page memorandum addressed to Dixie Adeniran, head of the county Library Services Agency. Adeniran, while saying the agency intends to adopt many of the changes suggested by Mahon, said his assertion that operating hours can be increased by 45% is unrealistic.

In order to meet that goal, Adeniran said she would have to reassign central library staff who perform a host of behind-the-scenes duties to circulation desks, where they would assist patrons checking books in and out.

To do that, however, Adeniran said she would have to virtually decimate other popular services offered by the library, including children’s story hours and reference desk assistance.

Additionally, such a restructuring would leave a skeleton crew to perform such low-profile but crucial functions as cataloguing of books, updating computer access to information and coordinating volunteers, Adeniran said.

“The trade-off is very serious,” Adeniran said. “I don’t think that opening a building to circulate a collection of old materials is offering library service. It involves a lot more than that.”

Adeniran agreed, however, that improvements need to be made in the agency’s fiscal operations.

“We know that there are refinements to be made and that is what we are working on,” she said.

Mahon said he decided to perform the audit earlier this year to evaluate the efficiency of the Library Services Agency’s management and its fiscal practices. The agency has come under fire in recent months for severely curtailing the number of operating hours at its branch libraries as a result of budget cuts.

His office performed the audit using agency documents from the period June, 1990, through June, 1994. Mahon, who faces a run-off election in November against accountant Richard Morrisset of Oxnard, said he is not surprised that Adeniran is not in total agreement with his findings.

“It’s not unusual that we don’t have 100% agreement,” he said. “The main thing is that she is in general agreement with what we have written.”

Mahon noted that the report did not contain recommendations, only suggestions on how the library agency might be better run, while responding to the public’s demand for longer hours.

“Which is better for the public?” Mahon said. “To have a library open more hours with no reference desk, or to cut operating hours and keep the reference desk and other services intact? That is a policy decision that Dixie will have to make.”

Adeniran plans to modestly increase hours at medium and large libraries, while still preserving other library services.

Medium-sized libraries such as those in Moorpark, Fillmore, Ojai and Port Hueneme would see their average weekly operating hours expand from 20 to 23 hours under her plan, Adeniran said.

And the large libraries in Ventura, Camarillo and Simi Valley would increase average weekly operating hours from 32 to 36 hours under her proposal, scheduled to take effect in September, she said.

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In the audit, Mahon pointed out the advances the library agency has made in the past four years, even as its budget was being slashed. Since fiscal year 1991-92, the agency’s budget has dropped about 35%, from $10.1 million to $6.6 million, he said.

Yet during that time, the agency has added on-line computer access to 1.1 million books and other material owned by libraries in neighboring counties and has installed two self-checkout counters.

The agency is also trying to find new ways to raise operating money, including the recent formation of a nonprofit library foundation, Mahon noted. And Ventura County libraries fall painfully behind on expenditures for books and other materials compared to other states, he said.

Ventura County spends just 98 cents per capita on books and materials, while the national per capita spending average is $3.22, the audit says.

Adeniran and her staff of 77 employees still have room for improvement, Mahon says in the report.

Besides expanding operating hours, Adeniran needs to exercise tighter control over cash flow in the library system’s 16 branch libraries and must have a better system for recording donations made to the agency, Mahon said.

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Although he is not suggesting that any money was improperly used, Mahon said, the agency needs to keep more detailed receipts from cash collected at branch libraries. And it must be careful about where it deposits donations and how it uses them, Mahon said.

“From an accountant’s point of view, there needs to be some stronger tracking,” Mahon said.

Mahon also suggested that $513,482 in unpaid fines, some as old as five years, be turned over to a collection agency. The agency has made minimal attempts to collect on those fines over the past few years, he said.

But it comes down to dollars, she said. Unless the agency receives at least the same level of funding it got in fiscal 1993-94--about $6.6 million--it may not be able to deliver on promises of increased hours at some branches.

The county Board of Supervisors is expected to make final budget decisions next week.