Callers Read the Riot Act on Library Policy

Nearly 500 outraged people from Los Angeles and throughout the country flooded the mayor’s office with phone calls Monday complaining about the city’s policy of naming libraries only after donors of $1 million, while a City Council member plotted to yank jurisdiction away from the Library Commission to name the new Watts branch after a local activist.

The head of the Library Commission also announced Monday that her board plans to drop the donor policy.

Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr., who represents Watts, said he will introduce an emergency motion today to name the new $3-million facility for Alma Reaves Woods, who has toiled over four decades to promote literacy in her South Los Angeles community. The commission will review the policy in August, but Svorinich, with Mayor Richard Riordan’s backing, wants the council to step in now so Woods can be honored at the library’s grand opening Saturday, when she is scheduled to serve as mistress of ceremonies.

“It’s just the right thing to do,” said Svorinich, who last week led 20 Watts residents to a Library Commission meeting pleading in vain that the branch be named for Woods. “Persons who contribute significantly in time and energy should be just as well recognized as someone who wants to be generous with a monetary contribution.”

*

The City Council motion calls for naming the 12,500-square-foot library the “Alma Reaves Woods/Watts Branch Library” to help promote community identity and celebrate a local hero. It does not change the overall policy, however.

“We gave the library department, the Library Commission, a chance to do the right thing. They didn’t do it,” said Barry Glickman, Svorinich’s chief of staff. “We want to get it done tomorrow. We’re not going to wait. We have to give them time to put the sign up.”

After a story in Sunday’s Times profiled Woods and the library-naming controversy, national radio commentator Charles Osgood on Monday urged listeners to phone Riordan’s office and demand the policy be rescinded. About 450 calls came in--one-third from the Los Angeles area, one-third from elsewhere in California and more than 100 from as far away as Michigan, Florida and Massachusetts.

“I told them that I really supported the idea of having her name up there, and if they didn’t want to change their stance they were pretty much boneheads,” said Arcadia resident Scott Wardlaw, who called Riordan, Svorinich, the Library Commission and even Woods after reading the Times story.

“She’s done so much for the community, it just seems sort of silly to say there’s no way she can [have the library named after her], but someone who needs a tax write-off can have their name plastered across a community that they’ve never set foot in,” said Wardlaw, who is not related to Bill Wardlaw, the mayor’s top political advisor.

Riordan and his press secretary did not return repeated telephone calls for comment but late in the afternoon released a letter that the mayor had sent to Svorinich.

In the letter, the mayor says he supports the councilman’s plan to skirt the Library Commission and name the Watts library for Woods. He also says he is asking the commission to “expedite the process of articulating a new policy that evaluates and considers human contributions and involves a strong community voice in decision making.”

Of the five library commissioners, two were out of town Monday and a third, Julia Simmons, repeated her opposition to the million-dollar policy--passed before she joined the board--and her support of the bid to put Woods’ name on the building. A fourth did not return telephone messages.

The fifth, commission President Olivia Cueva Fernandez, said in a written statement that the commission plans to erase its million-dollar policy--which has yielded no donors in its two years--but had tabled the naming of the Watts branch until August to conduct a full-scale review of the guidelines.

“That policy was designed to try to raise money for the very kind of inner-city programs that we at the library as well as the many other library supporters, including Alma Woods, throughout Los Angeles are working so hard to implement,” the statement said. “The board has always followed the principle that any library naming/renaming should only take place after adequate input from the community.”

Los Angeles public libraries typically bear their neighborhood’s name, or honor a deceased literary or historic figure, such as Mark Twain or Pio Pico. In 1994, the Riordan-appointed commission adopted a new policy of naming branches for million-dollar donors ($2 million for a regional library) in an effort to raise funds.

*

The City Council endorsed that move in May 1995, as the library entered a one-year agreement with its fund-raising foundation to enforce the policy. While that agreement recently expired, the policy remains on the books.

Woods, 71, who spent decades lugging books from the local library to children at the Nickerson Gardens housing project and later knocked on countless doors campaigning for votes for the bond issue that built the new library, was overjoyed Monday at the prospect of the honor.

“I’d just go dancing down the middle of Compton Avenue. I would just be absolutely thrilled and delighted,” said Woods, who added that she had been barraged with phone calls from supporters Sunday and Monday. “It would be next to motherhood--and that was something that I cherished--next to that would be having this library named in my honor.”