Cities Try to Take Over County-Run Libraries

The San Fernando Valley, it seems, wants out of the city. Schools make noises about departing the L.A. school district. Now, with secession becoming the political movement du jour in Los Angeles, several cities want to pull their local libraries out of the county system.

The state Senate Appropriations Committee votes today on a bill that would force Los Angeles County to return library tax dollars collected to any city that wants to set up its own library system.

As other secession movements have shown, though, it’s a long way from a bill in Sacramento to your own smoothly functioning government agency.

For one thing, 51 of the 52 cities served by county libraries get more services than they pay for in tax dollars, the exception being fast-growing Calabasas. So even if the bill passes, independent-minded municipalities would have to come up with additional funding.

Nonetheless, at least six cities, from Manhattan Beach to Diamond Bar, are vigorously pursuing the possibility of owning their own libraries. The county system has grown so lumbering and unresponsive, they contend, and its libraries so poor, that they are willing to pay considerably to improve service.

“We don’t want to just send our money downtown,” said Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard. Then, verbalizing what has become a common sentiment in Los Angeles politics, he added: “Give us the property taxes that we’re paying, keep what you’re paying and just let us go.”

County Librarian Sandra Reuben concedes that cities have not received much individual attention since a funding shift at the state level drastically reduced her office’s budget in 1993. She agrees that, because of accounting changes, her office can’t even tell a city how much it costs to run its library each year.

Critics like to point out that they know where every dollar goes when they contract with other county agencies, such as the Sheriff’s Department.

Striking out on their own, however, is unlikely to prove as liberating as some cities believe, Reuben said. Both the newly independent libraries and the remaining county branches, she said, would suffer along with fewer books and services, smaller budgets and less political clout.

Senate Bill 1998 “is about withdrawing, not collaborating,” Reuben said.

Introduced by Sen. Richard Mountjoy (R-Arcadia), the bill--which affects Los Angeles County only--is unlikely to incite a mass exodus from the county system, supporters say. It is not meant to. What it will do, they contend, is make leaving more feasible. It also will make clear that some cities are seriously displeased with the attention that they get from the county and perhaps prompt change.

“By and large there is this distrust out there of large institutions,” a primary reason for the recent popularity of secessionist causes, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe of the Center for Politics and Economics at Claremont Graduate School. “It engulfs the media. It engulfs the church. And it engulfs very large government bureaucracies.”

The communities supporting such causes have tended to be middle- or upper middle-class, predominantly white and less in need of public services than others, and have found support in the new anti-tax, anti-government Republican majority in the state Assembly, she said.

The result, she said, is the isolation of more affluent communities from needier areas, with those who can afford better services more willing to pay for them but less willing to see their money go to places “that you don’t even know what they look like.”

Existing law already permits a city to withdraw from a county library system and requires the county to negotiate with the city the terms of any such divorce. The law also says the county may return to the departing city its library tax dollars--but it is under no legal obligation to do so. And so, critics argue, the county is in no way beholden to its member libraries.

“If the county doesn’t have to return the tax money, they can turn a deaf ear” to requests for services, knowing the cities could never afford to leave, said Yvonne Hunter of the League of California Cities, whose local branch proposed the bill. “That is exactly what they’ve been doing.”

While all sides agree that library systems have been out of the political and economic limelight for years now, the seeds of secession were planted in 1992-93, when the state began dipping into local tax pools and the county library system saw its $64-million budget cut to $43 million.

Ten branch libraries were closed, and most of the 88 branches (which includes three bookmobiles) remaining in the system had their operating hours reduced drastically. By 1994, most county libraries were open no more than four days a week, and many as few as two.

The money has since begun to trickle back in through various doors. The current budget of $55.5 million includes $14 million from the county’s general fund and nearly $9 million from a recently created special assessment district, said David Flint, the county library’s assistant director.

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But the system’s critics--like the people encouraging the breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District and the secession of the San Fernando Valley--say the nation’s largest county library system has simply lost touch with the communities it serves.

“The county has not been able to meet our needs or even respond to them,” said Jim Wolfe, director of Manhattan Beach’s Department of Parks and Recreation. “We want to be taken seriously.”

City officials in the beach-side community formed a library commission and began toying with the idea of running their own show in 1993, after one of the city’s two libraries was closed and hours were cut in half at the remaining branch.

Through a series of grants and contributions, library supporters cobbled together $39,000 to donate to the county for improvements at their one remaining library. According to supporters of the legislation, the county’s donation policy prevented it from guaranteeing that the money would be used at the Manhattan Beach library, and so the city has yet to turn the funds over to the county.

In January, city officials submitted a request to leave the county system. The proposal calls for the county to hand over ownership of the library that remained open and return the library taxes paid by residents. The city then would contract with the county to take care of services that it believed that the county did well and at a reasonable cost, such as ordering books, while the city would take over tasks that it thought it could perform more efficiently.

In typical fashion, said City Manager Geoff Dolan, the county library has not even responded to the proposal.

Reuben said that she had seen the proposal, which she described as unworkable, but that she had not yet responded.

Although the county library is unable to pinpoint the annual budget for each branch, the Los Angeles County auditor controller estimated that in 1994-95, each library received between $700,000 and $1 million.

Claremont pays about $300,000 in library taxes. Southard, the city manager, said his city would have to raise perhaps $600,000 to properly support the library on its own. And, he said, he had little doubt that frustrated residents would approve an additional tax.

Claremont officials contend that when a local club offered to spruce up the library, county rules governing volunteers kept the club from doing little more than washing the exteriors of windows.

Many of the cities considering pulling out share the same gripes: Operating hours are still not what they once were; buildings have fallen into disrepair; it takes months or years to receive new equipment.

Palmdale switched to a city-funded system in 1977 when it was in need of a larger library and the county was unable to provide the funds. It was a difficult transition at the time, said Palmdale Director of Library Services Linda Storsteen, but well worth it in the end.

The entire $1.4-million annual budget comes from city coffers, she said, but the library is open more hours than most county libraries. No additional tax was needed, she said; the city’s general fund was able to cover the costs. And while the newer building is five times the size of its predecessor, Storsteen said, it is easier to manage because the decisions are made in the desert city, not 45 miles away in downtown Los Angeles.

“When the library is part of the community, they generally support a higher level of service,” Storsteen said. “Meeting the needs of a whole county are much more difficult than meeting the needs of one community.”

* Eric Slater is a Times staff writer; Tracy Johnson is a Times correspondent.