Merger Would Raise Library Charge : Oak Park: If their community joins the Thousand Oaks system, residents stand to pay more than they pay county for such services.

Thousand Oaks officials seem to be warming to the idea of Oak Park joining their library system, but they say the merger could cost each resident in the unincorporated community an additional $45 a year.

Thousand Oaks library director Marvin Smith said Thursday that he could support either merging his wealthy city library with Oak Park or contracting with the small community for limited services such as combined buying and cataloguing books.

Either way, he said Oak Park would have to come up with more money than property owners now pay the county for library services.

“Thousand Oaks bit the bullet 12 or 13 years ago and has done a marvelous job of supporting its library system,” he said. “We don’t want to diminish that level of service by taking on other responsibilities.”

But Oak Park officials--who requested the merger last month when the county threatened to close the library--said they do not want to discuss a merger further until the county reports back on a possible regional library system for the entire east county.

“Why just join two of us together when we could have a much bigger system?” said Ron Stark, aide to county Supervisor Frank Schillo, who represents Thousand Oaks and Oak Park.

The study is expected to be completed in the next few weeks. The cost of membership in the regional library system has not been determined, but Smith said a merger with Thousand Oaks’ library would cost about $54 a year per resident.

Oak Park residents now pay about $10 toward library services through property tax. Thousand Oaks residents pay about $47. Oak Park officials have said the extra money could come from another parcel tax.

If Oak Park officials recommend putting a parcel tax measure on the ballot, they would join Ojai and Ventura in asking voters to decide if they want to spend more money to keep their libraries open. In those communities the extra assessment would be $35 per parcel a year.

Meanwhile, Oak Park officials still plan to build a new library on the land adjacent to Oak Park High School. The community has set aside $2 million in developer fees for the project. But Oak Park officials have not come up with money for operations.

Representatives from the Thousand Oaks Library, which left the county system in 1982, have little sympathy for the struggling county system.

“I have never been sympathetic to opening our door to the flood of public who don’t pay for our services,” Smith said. “If we hadn’t broken off, we’d be in the same boat right now.”

Smith said the library, which charges non-residents $55 for a library card, already is looking at restricting access to those who do not live in Thousand Oaks.

He said the library system suffered $100,000 in vandalism last year. Smith believes non-residents who are unwilling to pay for a library card are the ones who sometimes rip the pages they need out of a book rather than shell out $55.

“The fact that L.A. County and Ventura County are dying on the vine means that they don’t have any resources,” he said. “People go where the information is. I hate to think what’s going to happen in the next 10 years.”