CITY TIMES COVER STORY : A STACK OF WOES : Budget Problems Have Hit County Library Branches Hard, Closing Many and Restricting Hours at Others. The Cutbacks Are Especially Felt by Children, Whose Access to a World of Books and Imagination Is Limited.

On the counter of the Huntington Park library, a small printed sign on a plastic water jug beckons to patrons: “Every penny counts. Cada centavo cuenta. “ The jar is about one-quarter full, with several dollar bills but mostly loose change and a few rolls of pennies.

That’s the extent of the fund raising at this county library branch. If the staff is thrifty, they’ll be able to buy a few new bestsellers that patrons have been clamoring for.

Several miles away in Watts, employees of Los Angeles’ Watts branch wait it out in a small, cramped building overflowing with books, videotapes and computers while construction continues on their new $2.8-million library due to open in the fall of 1995.

Such is the feast-or-famine world of community libraries.

A branch’s quality--perhaps its very existence--can depend more upon which system it belongs to and how much private support it garners than on how badly the community might need its services.

People who live in Los Angeles enjoy a city library system that, one way or another, has been finding enough cash of late to improve or construct buildings, buy materials and fill long-vacant positions. Yet residents of nearby cities and unincorporated areas find their county system’s branches struggling to stay open, let alone buy new books.

“The public keeps coming in and asking, ‘Do you have bestsellers?’ And I say ‘What bestsellers? We haven’t bought bestsellers in two years,’ ” said Alfredo Zuniga, library manager of the county’s Anthony Quinn branch on the Eastside.

The city’s 63-branch system has an operating budget of $36.7 million this fiscal year, an increase of almost 7% over last, but the county’s 87-branch system has a budget of $47.6 million, down 26% from the previous fiscal year’s $64.5 million.

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.

“In minority areas, especially, you already have some children who are reading below their (grade) level--but at least they could get in the library after school and get a book,” said Lydia Hammons, manager of the county’s Willowbrook library. With dwindling operating hours and a declining inventory, that opportunity has become more limited.

The Willowbrook branch is almost hidden in the Kenneth Hahn Plaza, behind a key shop and a toy store. The magazine shelves have as many empty spaces as they do magazines. And the book selection is sometimes sparse. With two elementary schools within blocks of the branch, classes used to visit daily before the major budget cutbacks two years ago.

“With the library only being open two days a week we probably lose kids,” Hammons said.

Mayra Jacinto, 10, used to go to her local Huntington Park library every afternoon for story time, but not since the library has been closing on Thursday and Fridays. “So I stay inside a lot, because it’s boring outside,” she said.

On the days the library is open, Mayra is busy dusting bookshelves, sweeping the rugs and putting up posters as a summer junior volunteer worker.

Mayra’s volunteer work at the Huntington Park branch would happen whether or not the county library system was having financial difficulties, said children’s librarian Karen D. Holmes. But the reduction of staff has created a need for more adult volunteers to take over a few extra duties. “It feels like our staff has just been wiped out and we just creep along by whatever means we can,” she said.

The county branches are victims of an $11-million library department budget shortfall that shows no signs of abating.

“This is the worst it’s been (for the county libraries),” said David Flint, assistant director for finance and planning with the County of Los Angeles Public Libraries. “We were the most severely impacted libraries in the state--both in dollar amount and percentage of our whole budget.”

The county library district closed 10 branches in fiscal 1992-93 because of budget cuts, bringing the system down to 87 branches. Since last year’s round of budget cuts, the system has laid off 370 full- and part-time workers, cut service hours by 65% and halted all purchases of new books, magazines and tapes. More than half of the libraries are only open two days a week, and seven of them are in Central and South Los Angeles and the Southeast cities.

All this finds the East Los Angeles, View Park and Willowbrook branches and the libraries in Bell and Huntington Park hoping their bad situation doesn’t become worse.

“We’re considered nonessential services--jails are more important than libraries,” Holmes said. “But, really, libraries are more important than jails. We keep people out of jail. We give them books for free and they bring them back. I’d say that’s a pretty important resource, wouldn’t you?”

The county libraries’ immediate problems go back to last year, when Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature shifted $2.2 billion of property tax revenue to schools while balancing the state budget. The Los Angeles County library system, which relies heavily on property taxes, lost $29.4 million of its annual revenue overnight.

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When several of the system’s libraries were recently threatened with closure, the County Board of Supervisors stepped in with a $2.5-million loan to keep them open at least until September. By then the county must either raise additional funds or set in place a funding operation to ensure that the money will be raised.

This month the board voted 3 to 1 to support a special tax district to fund county libraries and allow them to return to a five-day schedule.

City councils in the 52 municipalities in the county’s library district must decide whether they will join in. Only property owners in the unincorporated parts of the county and the participating cities will be taxed, county officials said, estimating that the average homeowner would pay less than $30 per year. Only libraries in these areas would receive the funding. The supervisors have scheduled an Aug. 30 public hearing on the matter.

County library officials are also hoping for relief through a bill sponsored by state Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys). The bill, SB-1448, would allow public libraries statewide to form special assessment districts to raise operating funds. Wilson vetoed a similar bill last year.

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Meanwhile, county libraries have mounted ambitious private fund-raising efforts on their own.

“Independent of what we hope to get from the state, we have a fairly active private fund-raising effort going on, plus the activities we have from our Friends groups,” Flint said. “Some are fairly active considering the economic level of the communities they’re in.”

The 12 county libraries in Central and South Los Angeles and in the Southeast cities have come to rely heavily on their individual Friends of the Library organizations, which have helped spread the word about the branches in addition to getting donations of money, books or other supplies.

The East Los Angeles’ Friends organization, founded last November, has garnered strong community support through a door-to-door campaign and storytelling festivals. The group’s rummage sale during a countywide library fund-raiser brought in $1,600. Huntington Park’s Friends group for the children’s library has donated books, magazine racks and periodicals. Holmes, the children’s section librarian, has brought in a desk and typewriter.

In Willowbrook, it’s been a little harder.

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On a recent day, the plastic water jug placed on that branch’s counter to collect a few coins, maybe some dollar bills, sat empty. The branch’s Friends group consists of two people who haven’t been able to rally a lot of residents to their cause.

“This is not an area where you can ask people for money,” said Hammons, the branch manager. “It’s hard enough getting them to come to the library. If they do come, it’s because they can’t afford to buy the books themselves.”

Although the Los Angeles system’s nearly 30 inner-city branches are not in dire financial straits, they still rely on private sources for summer reading programs, computer classes or to buy more books than the city budget can support. For inner-city branches, raising the funds is more difficult than in other areas of the city.

“Friends groups in places like Woodland Hills, Sherman Oaks and West L.A. can raise over $1,000 a month in fund-raising drives,” said Arthur Pond, senior librarian at the city’s Hyde Park branch. “Here we raise about $125. . . . This is not a neighborhood that has a lot of money to spend, and it’s not one where there are a lot of used-book dealers haunting the book sales.”

The Friends of Baldwin Hills and Watts have been sponsoring book and bake sales. Volunteers work for little else than the pleasure of being near books.

And some corporations are doing their part.

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At the Mark Twain branch in South-Central, three computers in a new homework center are the results of a $150,000 donation over three years from Sanwa Bank California, which adopted the branch as part of the city library system’s new Adopt-a-Branch project.

“It’s almost like the luck of the draw to find out which branch will attract the attention of a certain person with money,” said Laura Dwan, senior librarian at the city’s Baldwin Hills branch, which has just a small collection of books for adults and focuses more on children.

In affluent areas, a mere signature on a personal check can provide major financial support.

Nearly 2,000 Brentwood residents paid for almost all of the $2.4-million construction bill for their new 10,400-square-foot library, with one woman giving more than $1 million. The Los Angeles City Council put up $350,000 from the city’s General Fund for the project, a decision that caused controversy.

“The distribution of advantages in Los Angeles follows very closely the neighborhoods of big campaign contributors,” said Jeb Brighouse, a community activist in Echo Park, where the local branch library has been housed in temporary quarters on North Laveta Terrace since the 1971 Sylmar earthquake.

“Money talks. Brentwood talks, and Echo Park is silent,” he said.

City officials dispute such comments.

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

The city has just finished taking bids for a new Echo Park branch, but no ground has been broken, said Robert G. Reagan, a spokesman for the city library system. It typically takes seven years to build a library, he said, from securing financing to the opening.

In March, meanwhile, the City Council doled out $56,000 a year for a 5,000-square-foot space in the Neptune Building at 701 E. 3rd St. for the Little Tokyo library, ending a two-year search to relocate that branch from temporary quarters. The branch, now located in a 2,400-square-foot room, will be moving into the new facilities in August.

Twenty-five of the city branches are undergoing major rebuilding or renovation, thanks to a $53.4-million bond issue passed by voters in 1989 and federal Community Development Block Grant funds. Eight branches in Central and South Los Angeles are being repaired or replaced because the historic sites needed to be brought up to seismic code or because the libraries’ resources were outgrowing their facilities, officials said.

“We’re just too cramped here. We’re busting at the seams,” said Norma Anders, senior librarian at the Watts branch.

The new 12,500-square-foot Watts branch is scheduled to open at 103rd Street and Compton Avenue. This month, workers began renovating the Memorial branch at 4625 W. Olympic Blvd. in Country Club Park, the Angeles Mesa library at 2400 W. 52nd St. and the John Muir branch at 1005 W. 64th St.

Fund-raising efforts led by actress-choreographer Debbie Allen and the J. Paul Getty Trust raised more than $700,000 for the rebuilding of the Muir and the relocation of the Junipero Serra, 4301 S. Figueroa Ave. The temporary locations of both libraries were damaged during the 1992 riots.

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Plans are under way to build a 10,500-square-foot Junipero Serra branch. The original 1923 building on South Olive Street was damaged in January’s Northridge earthquake and will be repaired and--like other historic library buildings that can’t measure up to seismic codes because of book stacks--converted to other public use.

The outlook for city libraries is favorable right now, said Pond, the senior librarian at the Hyde Park branch. But it could always change.

“Libraries have good local support, but when city (or county) government gets in a pinch, that’s when we tend to bite it,” Pond said. “And when libraries take a hit, it is really a big deal.”