Pact Would Let Libraries Stay Open 2 Days a Week

More than 8,000 library supporters signed petitions. Hundreds sent letters to the Orange County Board of Supervisors. Dozens of soda and beer cans were dropped in the mail along with the note “Can the Library Closure Plan” and sent to at least one county supervisor.

These are some of the ways Orange County residents have registered their objections to the announced closure of six of the county’s 28 public libraries due to the bankruptcy and budget cuts.

Apparently, somebody was listening.

One day before the board was expected to debate the closure plan, Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez and Supervisor Jim Silva announced a compromise that will keep five of the targeted libraries open at least two days a week for the next year. The sixth branch, in Seal Beach, is expected to be sold and operated as a private library, officials said.

“No one wants to see a library close down, and we believe this is a package that most will be pleased with,” Vasquez said.

The county’s 28 libraries, which serve more than 750,000 people, are struggling to maintain services while cutting $3 million from the system’s $23-million annual budget, County Librarian John M. Adams said.

The original proposal scheduled to be reviewed by the board today recommended closing two branches in Garden Grove and others in La Palma, Silverado Canyon, Villa Park and Seal Beach. They are now open four or five days a week. Officials said they will look for other ways to cut costs.

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Although the proposal also called for expanding service at a few branches, many in the targeted areas took the plan as a call to action.

Dorothy Rosati, a 61-year-old Garden Grove resident, drafted a letter urging residents to protest the closure. She persuaded a local business to make 500 copies free of charge and for several nights stayed up until 2 a.m. pecking away at her manual typewriter, addressing envelopes to the Orange County Board of Supervisors. Then she drafted volunteers to help pass out the letters and envelopes.

“I’ve never done anything like this before in my whole life,” said Rosati, who said she does not use the library a lot but wanted to be sure her grandchildren could. “I didn’t know what it would take, but when I read it might be closed I said: ‘No way! That’s my cute little library!’ ”

One of Rosati’s friends, Helen O’Brien, also helped pass out letters, often returning to neighborhoods two or three times to make sure concerned residents signed and sent them off.

A self-described “news junkie,” O’Brien, 64, said she visits the library several times a month, mostly to read finance and news magazines and newspapers.

“I’m not sure what I would do without the library here,” said O’Brien, a member of Save Our Libraries, a group organized in recent weeks to help fight on behalf of library patrons.

Lee Sotel, 69, of Garden Grove also took the proposed closure personally and collected more than 4,600 signatures on behalf of Save Our Libraries. In all, the group has collected more than 8,000 signatures it hopes to present to the board today.

“I’ll admit that I’m doing this for selfish reasons, I love my library,” Sotel said with a laugh. “Every time I come here, I leave with a stack of books. I like the bestsellers. But I’m also concerned about everyone else too. Everyone who wants access to a library should have it.”

Silverado Canyon library users turned to an inventive method to get the board’s attention. Vasquez said he has three crates filled with empty beer and soda cans that were wrapped with a pro-library message and dropped in the mail.

“I didn’t know you could mail a can,” the supervisor said. “But I guess so, for 40 cents.”

Vasquez said he is not surprised by the public’s response since “libraries have a quantifiable value, but they also have a lot of sentimental value to a lot of people.”

Adams said he is pleased with the compromise.

“It’s workable, it certainly makes me happy we won’t have to close libraries,” he said. “But it’s still pretty bad to have five libraries open just two days a week.”

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The new proposal will keep libraries open five days a week in Brea, Seal Beach, Laguna Beach, Stanton and Los Alamitos. Those branches’ hours currently vary.

It also calls on Garden Grove officials to enter into negotiations to waive the county’s $93,000 rental fee for that city’s three library branches. The proposal also shifts responsibility for archive maintenance to the county office of the clerk-recorder.

“We’re delighted. We’re pleased to hear it,” Garden Grove Mayor Bruce A. Broadwater said. “People want their libraries.”

Rosati and others, however, say the fight has just begun.

“For now, at least that’s a reprieve,” she said. “But two days a week, that’s not good enough.”