It’s Feast-or-Famine World for Community Libraries : Services: Faced with severe budget cuts, many facilities are struggling to stay open, let alone buy new materials and books.

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.

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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 Thursdays and Fridays. 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.”

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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.”

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.

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.

In June 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.

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.

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.

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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 .

“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. . . .”

“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.

City officials dispute such comments.

“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.

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.

The new 12,500-square-foot Watts branch is scheduled to open at 103rd Street and Compton Avenue. In June, 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.