Thousand Oaks OKs Opening Library on Fridays

This city’s main library will soon be open on Fridays again for the first time in five years, joining the Ojai Library as the only libraries in Ventura County that are open every day of the week.

The Thousand Oaks City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to spend $60,000 in general fund reserves to expand the hours of the main branch of the Thousand Oaks Library to include Fridays starting in January.

“Outstanding. The library will again be open on Fridays,” Mayor Andy Fox said after the vote.

Council members had decided during budget discussions earlier this year to reinstate the library hours, which were scaled back because of budget cuts in 1991. But they opted to wait until the library returned to its original location on Janss Road to choose where the needed funds would come from.

On Monday, the 14-year-old main library, which was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake and later found to be infested with potentially toxic mold spores, will reopen after a $4.5-million renovation.

It had been operating out of a temporary location on Willow Lane until last month. Thousand Oaks also has a branch library in Newbury Park.

Although they were optimistic that it could be done, council members Mike Markey and Judy Lazar said Tuesday that they wanted to make sure Thousand Oaks could afford to keep the library open in the years to come.

The $60,000 approved by the council will only cover the cost of keeping the library open on Fridays through the end of the fiscal year June 30. So city leaders will have to revisit the issue next year to decide where money to keep the library open all week will come from.

“I don’t want to do this if we can only do it for six months,” Markey said.

City Manager Grant Brimhall offered lukewarm assurances, saying that the city should “absolutely maybe” be able to continue funding the library every day of the week along with other budget demands next fiscal year.

“I can’t give you absolute certainty that you’ll have all the dollars you need,” Brimhall said. “I can guarantee you won’t have all the dollars to do all the things you want to do. It’s going to have to be a balancing act.”

In addition to the increase in hours--from 55 to 63 per week--the Thousand Oaks Library will have about 20,000 more books than before the quake, for a total of 320,000 volumes.

It also will have a new CD-ROM collection purchased by the Friends of the Thousand Oaks Library.

Marvin E. Smith, Thousand Oaks’ library director, plans to provide seven-day service the same way the city did before 1991--by using temporary librarians, aides and pages to fill in on off hours, thereby allowing regular staff to focus on heavier-use times.

Smith expects to open on Fridays beginning Jan. 10.

“We have some recruitment problems that we should be able to resolve by then,” he said.