Libraries May Get State Grant to Keep Them Going

The state appears ready to toss the county’s sinking library agency a life preserver--a grant of more than $100,000 that would enable seven branches to stay afloat until June 30.

Originally slated to close at the end of March, many of the small neighborhood branches showed signs of trouble Wednesday as librarians finished packing up hundreds of books that they must return to a vendor.

“Now that the reality is starting, it is not a happy thing,” said Evelyn Cuevas, manager of the tiny Saticoy branch. Cuevas was boxing volumes by Sidney Sheldon, Danielle Steele and other bestsellers that libraries have been leasing from a Pennsylvania bookseller. “How do you explain to your patrons that none of our new books are here?”

The California State Library has told the county’s Library Services Agency that it stands to receive between $100,000 and $120,000 from the Public Library Fund, county agency Director Dixie Adeniran said Wednesday.

If the money comes through, Adeniran said, the agency would use it to keep libraries open and employees working until the county’s fiscal year ends June 30.

“It’s a Band-Aid,” Adeniran said. “Not much more.”

But Supervisor Frank Schillo and others racing to establish a countywide library federation say the eleventh-hour grant would buy three more months to put their plan together.

Under the proposal, the county and its cities would set up a joint-powers agreement that would essentially transfer control of the libraries to individual cities. Schillo said the move would enable the libraries collectively to save about $400,000--money that he said libraries now pay to the county for such overhead costs as bookkeeping and personnel administration.

“My place is to get all the fat out of the system so the public knows there is no excess involved in any library in the system,” he said.

But skeptics of the plan have said the county library system suffers from a lack of cash, not a lack of efficiency. Since 1992, cuts in state funding to local governments have devastated the agency, which has slashed its budget from $10 million to $5.8 million.

Library backers said that like the joint-powers authority the Santa Clara County library system set up last year, Schillo’s plan must include a special assessment tax or other cash generator to succeed.

Yet library supporters said they intend to work with Schillo.

“I don’t know if [Schillo’s proposal] is necessarily the ultimate way to do it,” said Ventura City Councilman Jim Friedman, who is helping establish a task force made up of library support groups in Ventura. “But it is the only way we have so far, and it is certainly worth considering.”

Schillo said he is scheduling a meeting with library officials and the 10 city managers in the county to rally support and hash out details of the proposal.

Schillo admits that his plan may not produce enough money to keep libraries operating at a level the public wants.

“If any city wants to put a [library tax] initiative on the ballot, I will support it,” he said. “If members of the library federation get together and collectively decide they want a special assessment countywide, that is their own decision.”

As they seek new sources of cash for libraries, Ventura library supporters who met Wednesday night agreed on the need to create a long-term goal for the three county branches in the city. Some discussed the possibility of shutting down the branches and building a new, state-of-the-art facility if they manage to find new money.

“Do we want three little libraries or do we want a place to go to that we can be really proud of?” said Diane Neveu, a member of the city’s new library task force.

As Schillo continues to hammer out his federation proposal, he has also organized a trip to Sacramento on Feb. 22 to plead with state officials to allocate more money for libraries.

Thanks to a recovering economy, Gov. Pete Wilson’s latest spending plan proposes a 15% income tax cut. So Schillo and other officials from the county plan to ask the governor’s office to return some of the money that the state took from local governments in the early 1990s.

“There is money we think ought to come back and make the county libraries whole,” Schillo said.

Cuevas said her library would be far from whole, as the removal of more than 100 bestsellers had essentially gutted the new-releases section of her branch.

The Saticoy branch and four other small libraries have relied on a special program that allows them to lease books to keep their shelves stocked with hot titles. When the books lose their cachet after a few months on the shelves, an arrangement with the vendor allows the libraries to return most of the copies.

But the $20,000 for the program has dried up in the midst of the library agency’s budget crisis, and Cuevas found herself stacking hardbacks into cardboard boxes to ship them back to the East Coast.

“Readers usually come straight to the section here,” Cuevas said, adding that she still does not know whether the library where she has worked for 10 years will soon close. “It is going to be a sad thing when they see the empty shelves.”