Board OKs Funding 5 Libraries, Literacy Program Through June

With no quick fix in sight for Ventura County’s cash-strapped libraries, county leaders agreed Tuesday to bail out the smallest branches for another nine months--long enough, they hope, to put a permanent revenue solution in place.

To the delight of library supporters, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to come up with $288,700 to maintain five neighborhood branches and an adult literacy program through the end of June. Because money for the neighborhood libraries was set to run out Sept. 30, the board had originally planned to vote on spending $111,700 to bankroll the branches through January.

But some supervisors wondered aloud Tuesday whether county and library officials needed more time to determine the fate of the Library Services Agency, which runs 16 branches across the county, and they agreed to provide money for an extra five months.

On Oct. 29, a consultant is expected to release recommendations for shoring up the agency, and the public may end up voting on a special homeowners tax for libraries in March.

Lisa Meeker, president of Ojai Valley Friends of the Library, said the board’s decision to keep the branches afloat triggered a collective sigh of relief among library supporters, who have lobbied the panel for the emergency dollars.

“I am thrilled that they have been farsighted enough to see that it is a waste of everybody’s time to have to go every three months and beg on bended knee for funding,” she said.

Originally targeted for closure at the end of June this year, the literacy program and community libraries received $106,000 from the board in June to spare them until Sept. 30.

Meeker added that with the county paying the Denton, Texas-based Providence Center for Consulting & Planning $48,300 to develop plans for reorganizing the library system, it would not have made sense for supervisors to allow the branches to close before studying the proposals.

“They had backed themselves into a wall,” she said.

To pull the branches and literacy program back from the brink of closure, the board will use $165,000 that the county had left over after building the new coroner’s office in Ventura earlier this year. The county will also dip into its general funds to pay the more than $123,000 remaining, although Dixie Adeniran, the library agency’s director, said state grants could help cover the balance.

Although the money will keep branches in El Rio, Meiners Oaks, Oak View, Saticoy and Piru open a little longer, the supervisors cautioned that they cannot afford to continue bailing out the libraries.

“The perennial problem is the [lack of] a sustainable source of revenue,” Supervisor Frank Schillo said.

Seeking a way to provide a steady stream of revenue after state cuts essentially halved the library agency’s once $10-million budget, supervisors voted 3 to 2 in July to move forward with a special benefit assessment district.

Without a vote of the people, a special tax district could be set up requiring homeowners in cities with county-operated libraries to pay $33 a year to generate revenue for the agency.

But if Proposition 218 on the Nov. 5 ballot is approved, local governments would be required to ask voter permission to establish such districts. If it does pass, supervisors and library supporters will have to wait until at least the March election to know the fate of this potential, and politically prickly, revenue source.

Patricia Flanigan, manager of the county’s Adult Literacy Program, which serves more than 1,000 residents annually, said she is grateful that the temporary money the supervisors approved Tuesday saves her program from the budget ax for another nine months.

“It just takes the pressure off,” she said. “I feel like I have lost 10 pounds.”